Social commerce integrates user interactions and user-generated content with commercial activities in the context of social media platforms. Examples include Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shopping, where brands attach product tags directly to their posts, enabling users to complete purchase within the social media platform. A user's on-site purchase decision can be driven by the impulse to buy upon seeing a product but is constrained by their limited attention.
In this paper, we propose a novel choice model that captures users' impulsive behavior and limited attention span during purchase decisions on social media platforms. We explore a retailer's product display problem on a social media product page. Our investigation reveals that the size of the optimal display set can be monotone decreasing or increasing depending on the interplay between the population's inclination for impulse buying and limited attention span. When the influence of impulse buying supersedes users' diminishing attention, it can be optimal for the retailer to display a larger set of products for the impulsive population. Additionally, we delve into two strategies for retailers to enhance their selling process in social commerce: investing in curating environmental stimuli around their product posts and leveraging influencer promotion of specific products.
Bio: Yuan Guo is an Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences at the George Washington University School of Business. She graduated from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University in 2023. Her research interests are Revenue Management, Assortment Planning, Customer Choice, Retailing, Omni-channel, and Platform.