Influence of informational factors on purchase intention in social recommender systems

Social recommender systems have recently gained increasing popularity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influences of informational factors on purchase intention in social recommender systems.

Specifically, this study validated the mediating effect of trust in recommendations and the perceived value between informational factors and consumers’ purchase intention.

The results confirm that recommendation persuasiveness was a strong predictor of trust in recommendations and perceived value. Recommendation completeness was positively related to trust in recommendations and perceived value as well. Trust in recommendations and perceived value was found to be strong drivers of purchase intention.

The author identifies two sets of informational factors, i.e. recommendation persuasiveness and recommendation completeness, which are relevant to consumer attitudes. The current study proved that informational factors on consumers’ purchase intention are fully mediated through trust in recommendations and perceived value.