From sPassion to sWOM: The role of flow

Purpose - Social commerce websites entail a completely new scenario for sharing experiences and opinions due to its richness in terms of social interactions. Nowadays, users can interact with the company and with other users; hence, it seems important to study how social stimuli affect users. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response framework and flow theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the social stimulus (named social passion (sPassion)) has a positive effect on the organism (state of flow), which leads to a users' positive response (via social word of mouth (sWOM)). Design/methodology/approach - The data were collected through an online survey in 2015. The sample consists of 771 users of social commerce websites, of which 51 percent are male and 49 percent female, aged between 16 and 80 years old. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data with the statistical software SPSS version 22 and EQS 6. Findings - The empirical results confirm that passionate users are prone to experience a state of flow and, as a consequence, share positive sWOM. Originality/value - This study contributes to the literature on customers' online participation, and the findings are hoped to help companies in developing social commerce websites that boost users' exchange of information.