Usage of Social Neuroscience in e-

Commerce Research
Mirjana Pejić Bach
Content
• Background
• Methodology
• Results
• The most important journals
• The most important international organizations
• The most important researchers
• Authors with most citations
• Example paper
• Conclusions
Background
What is e-commerce?
• Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become one of the main drivers of
the digital transformation of both national and global economies.
• e-commerce, also known as e-business, has become widespread term in the
late 90’s, while it has been present for much longer period of time, from 80’s.
• Two main types of e-commerce are defined, based on the types of clients:
business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customers (B2C).
• However, the emergence of social media and peer-to-peer networks enticed
the additional type of e-commerce: customers-to-customers (C2C).
• Due to the prevalent usage of smart-phones, e-commerce has become often
referred to as m-commerce [3]
How do we research e-commerce?
• Research area of e-commerce is composed by many scientific disciplines, such as computer
science, psychology, economics, and natural sciences, and applied areas, such as marketing,
management, finance and engineering

• NeuroIS has emerged as a new branch of applied social neuroscience, with the goal to use
neurophysiological tools for gathering “presumably objective data directly from the human
body” for the purpose of information systems research.
• Two groups of neurophysiological tools are used: (i) psycho physiological tools, such as skin
conductance response and eye tracking, and brain imaging tools, such as functional
magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, which are often used in
combination with the traditional behavioural data sources used in social research.
• These tools allow the quantification of human reactions to different aspects of information
systems, which are the essential part of e-commerce.
Methodology
Steps
• Step 1: Search of Scopus with selected keywords
• Step 2: Selection of papers that present results of the application of
social neuroscience in e-commerce research
• Step 3: Identifiation of the most important journals
• Step 4: Identification of the most important international
organizations
• Step 5: Identification of the most important researchers
• Step 6: Identification of authors with most citations
• Step 7: Analysis of the example paper
Overview of Step 1 and Step 2
Results
Journals with published papers, according to
impact factor and number of published papers
Top 5 conferences, according to number of
published papers
The most frequent
authors, authors’
affiliations and
authors’ country
(≥2)
The most cited authors, with the most recent
papers published on the topics
Example paper
Bai, Y., Yao, Z., Cong, F., & Zhang, L. (2015). Event-related potentials elicited by
social commerce and electronic-commerce reviews. Cognitive neurodynamics, 9(6),
639-648.
Publication journal
• Cognitive Neurodynamics is a peer-reviewed journal, and Editor-in-
Chief is Rubin Wang, Director of Institute for Cognitive Neurodynamics
(ICN), School of Information Science and Engineering, East China
University of Science and Technology (ECUST). Cognitive
Neurodynamics journal is ‘focusing on the overlapping fields of
cognitive science and nonlinear dynamics, while also covering related
areas in neuroscience, mathematics, physics, computer science,
informatics, intelligent robotics and more’.
• Journal impact factor for 2016 is 2.000 (according to ISI Journal Citation
Report), while it is in Scopus Q3 of the area of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Journal is published by Springer Verlag.
Research paradigm
• Authors were lead in their work by the positivism as research paradigm aspiring to
investigate neural correlates of social commerce reviews and electronic-commerce
reviews.
• The goal is fulfilled with experimentation, using electroencephalography (EEG) in
order to measure evoked event related potentials (ERP).
• Authors developed hypothesis, using inductive reasoning, that social commerce
and electronic-commerce reviews will elicit different event-related waveforms,
intending “to support the findings of prior behaviour research that participants pay
more attention to social commerce reviews that include reviews from friends than
to e-commerce reviews that include reviews from strangers” (Bai et al., 2015p.640).
• Results of the research are collected by experiment measuring facts (event related
potentials incited by SCR and ECR), which are interpreted by logic.
Conceptual framework (1/2)
• Social commerce is the notion describing the phenomenon of online buying and
selling products and services, driven by the comments on social media, usually
posted by friends and acquaintances. Products and services can be sold on e-
commerce websites, or directly over the social media (e.g. company Facebook
pages).
• When people buy products online (over the e-commerce website or social media
website), the use the reviews in order to get more information from other people
who already bought the product or used the service. These reviews can be written
by friends and published as comments in social media (e.g. Facebook comments), or
can be written by strangers and published already on the e-commerce websites (e.g.
Amazon) or review websites (e.g. Yelp). However, product and service reviews
published online tend to be fabricated in some cases by the company itself (selling
product or services) or by its competitors.
Conceptual framework (2/2)
• Previous research indicated that people tend to give more credibility to the opinions of their
friends, when making final decision on buying, ‘suggesting that social relationship information,
which is implied in reviews by friends and absent in e-commerce, is a key dimension in social
commerce’ (Bai et al., 2015, p.640). These researches have been conducted using survey research.
However, survey research has various limitations that can impact the validity of its results, e.g.
respondents may not be completely honest in providing their answers, or may feel uncomfortable
providing answers. Bai et al. (2015, p.641) state that ‘cognitive neuroscience theories and methods
[e.g., eye movement, fMRI, EEG) can verify the results based on the behavioural data or help get a
more in-depth understanding about the consumer’s online purchasing intention. In addition, new
problems in e-commerce could also be explored and solved by using neuroscience tools’.
• Based on this conceptual framework, Bai et al. (2015) investigate the impact of social commerce
reviews (reviews from friends) and electronic-commerce reviews (reviews from strangers) to the
online buying behaviour, using evented related potentials measured by EEG. Therefore, this paper
investigates the online buying behaviour. Various authors use cognitive neuroscience tools in order
to investigate behavioural science questions.
Goals of the research and hypothesis
• The goal of the research is to analyse the event related potential component
changes elicited by the decision of buying (or non-buying) the product, in the
environment of social commerce reviews (reviews from friends) and
electronic-commerce reviews (reviews from strangers). Authors collected
evidence in order to test conclusions in the previous behavioural research that
‘participants pay more attention to SCRs that include reviews from friends than
to ECRs that include reviews from strangers’ (Bai et al., 2015, p.641).
• The hypothesis of the research is that reviews by friends should have more
impact to the online buying decisions than reviews by strangers, measured by
ERP signals. In other words, hypothesis is that ERP signals will be statistically
different in the environment of social commerce reviews (reviews from friends)
and electronic-commerce reviews (reviews from strangers).
Research design and methods (1/3)
• Research was conducted with the 19 volunteer participants, from the
School of Economics and Management, Behiang Universtiy University.
From their social media websites, information about their friends
(names and photos were used).
• Authors used priming experimental paradigm with prime stimulus (S1)
and target stimulus (S2). Stimuli were pictures digitalized at 620 × 600
pixels.
Research design and methods (2/3)
• Prime stimulus (S1) were pictures included product information, and target stimulus (S2) were
pictures with the photo and name of the individual giving reviews about the product presented in
S1.
• Prime stimulus (S1) were photos of tablet computers with the description of their characteristics.
Tablet computers (20 different types) were chosen from the Chinese “best-selling list” of ZOL.com
(the largest digital product e-store in China). For each product, two pictures were prepared: (i) tablet
computer picture, and (ii) tablet six parameter (e.g. screen size, memory, etc). It is presumed that
participants should be informed about these characteristics.
• Target stimulus (S2) were photos of social commerce reviews (reviews from friends) and electronic-
commerce reviews (reviews from strangers). For each prime stimuli (S1), two different target
stimulus (S2) were prepared. First one, (S2-1) consisted on social commerce reviews (reviews
from friends), and second one (S2-2) consisted on electronic-commerce reviews (reviews from
strangers). Social commerce reviews were constructed using the data about the participant’s friends
collected from their websites (names and photos). Therefore, the participants were aware which
reviews were from friend and which were from strangers.
Research design and methods (3/3)
• Therefore, the stimuli consisted of: (1) 20 pairs of S1 (20 tablets) with
social commerce reviews (reviews from friends), and (2) 20 pairs of S1 (20
tablets) with e-commerce commerce reviews (reviews from strangers).
• Steps in the experimental paradigm are as following: (1) each trial started
with a fixation point (+) for 1500 ms, (2) blank screen is shown for 500 ms,
(3) S1 was shown for 1500 ms, (4) blank screen is shown for 500 ms, (5) 2
was shown for 4000 ms, (6) volunteers decided if they will buy or not buy
the products.
•  Stimulus pairs (with social commerce reviews and e-commerce commerce
reviews) were presented randomly. E-prime 2.0 software was used for the
presentation of stimuli and for the collection of behavioural responses.
Data
• Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings and ERP data processing were
used for data collection. In addition, behavioural data with the
decision (buy or non-buy) were collected.
Results
• Results indicated that P300 component was triggered by the visual stimuli in the experiment.
•  Results indicated that the P300 amplitudes in response to social commerce reviews
(Pz = 4.87 ± 0.86 µV; Poz = 5.86 ± 1.14 µV; Oz = 5.71 ± 0.80 µV) were larger than those in response
to electronic-commerce reviews (Pz = 2.34 ± 1.39 µV; Poz = 2.19 ± 1.42 µV; Oz = 1.80 ± 1.45 µV).
Two-way Anova analysis indicated that these differences were statistically significant at 1% level (F
(1,15) = 87.74; P < 0.001).
•  The latent period of social commerce reviews (Pz = 351.13 ± 18.59 ms; Poz = 338.25 ± 21.18 ms;
Oz = 333.87 ± 22.77 ms) were later than those in ECRs condition (Pz = 375.50 ± 21.67 ms;
Poz = 365.88 ± 14.60 ms; Oz = 356.75 ± 14.731 ms). Again, two -way Anova analysis indicated that
these differences were statistically significant at 1% level (F (1,15) = 23.41; P < 0.001).
• Behavioural analysis from the 19 volunteer decisions on buying or non-buying products indicated
that participants were more triggered to buying in response to social commerce reviews (68% of
participants) compared to electronic-commerce reviews (32%). However, authors do not
Conclusion
• Authors conclude that they ‘focused on analysing ERPs elicited by the
product reviews of unknown and known individuals and their
association to consumer behaviour. The ERPs (e.g., P300) revealed
that participants allocated more attention to the SCR stimuli than to
the ECR stimuli. Furthermore, this attention effect in participants
influenced their purchasing intentions’ (Bai et al., 2015, p.648).
Ethical Issues
• All subjects were 19 paid volunteers from the School of Economics
and Management, Behiang Universtiy, which indicate a possible risk of
bias. However, students were controlled regarding gender, age and all
were right-handed. All of them were Chinese native speakers.
Participants did not know the purpose of the experiment. Study was
conducted ‘out with the ethical approval of the institutional review
board (Behiang University, Beijing, China) and in line with the Helsinki
Declaration.
Selection of Literature
• Literature provided at the end of the paper consisted of 34 sources,
mainly research papers in the peer-reviewed journals. Sources
focused to the: (1) e-commerce and social commerce in general, (2)
neuroscience research of various e-commerce phenomenon, and (3)
event related potentials methodology. However, literature review
does not provide sufficient elaboration of behavioural research with
the topic of impact of personal and strangers reviews to the buying
decision.
Review of the paper (1/3)
• Overall, this paper can be evaluated as very good.
• The research question is clear and supported with previous research
results.
• Experiments are designed in line with the priming paradigm, and
analysis of the results is clear and logical.
• Language and structure is adequate and in line with the usual
practice.  
Review of the paper (2/3)
• However, paper has several flaws.
• First, scientific contribution is not clearly elaborated not in the introduction and
discussion part of the paper, in comparison with previous research. Authors
mention various neuroscientific research papers, but they do not provide
sufficient analysis of behavioural research with the topic of impact of personal
and strangers reviews to the buying decision.
• Second, results of the behavioural experiment are not presented with sufficient
details. Authors state that ‘table 1 describes the behavioural findings from the
19 participants’ data’, but this tables does not provide detailed information
about the buying decision, taking into account that each of the 19 participants
evaluated 20 tablets with 40 reviews (20 personal and 20 from strangers).
Review of the paper (3/3)
• Third, there were more male than female in the sample (7 females
and 12 males), and authors lacked to elaborated if this was a
limitation of the study or not (e.g. they could have argued that this
misbalance should not have the impact to the results, supported with
previous research on impact of gender to the results of
neuroscientific experiments).
• Finally, authors should have taken into account the potential impact
of various characteristics of tablets to the buying decision (e.g. they
should have provided evidence that these different characteristics
should not have impact to the buying decision).