Falling prey for social media shopping frauds: The victims’ perspective

Proliferation of e-commerce and the advent of social media utilization have contributed to the significant progress of social commerce around the world. Similar to existing internet applications for businesses, such as conventional e-commerce and mobile commerce, interactions and socialization on online medium (with less visibility of sellers and buyers physical presence) over the social media also possess risks of unreliable and fraudulent transactions. Despite the informed risks of online dealings, fraudulent social commerce incidents are growing. While the existing literature on social commerce provided insights on social commerce development in terms of its advantages and adoption, dearth of studies offer understanding of the dark side of social commerce, particularly with regards to the occurrence of social commerce frauds.This proposed qualitative study intends to bridge this gap, with the focus to examine the occurrence and the nature of the social commerce fraud, and consequently to understand how and why shoppers become victims of social commerce fraud.Findings are expected to contribute towards conceptual understanding of social commerce fraud phenomenon and offer inputs to increase awareness among social commerce community.