Reports indicate that in 2017, social commerce had become a 20 billion dollar industry. Given the developing world’s fatigue with social media, social commerce growth will likely be fueled by consumers from developing economies. While literature has investigated social commerce in the context of established brands in developed economies (e.g. Kim and Ko, 2012), it cannot yet explain consumers’ engagement with the uniqueness of social media commerce in developing economies. Social commerce in Southeast Asian economies are largely conducted amongst individuals or micro businesses. Since social media platforms largely do not provide commerce security nor support, consumers are more vulnerable to fraudulent practices. What factors motivate these purchases despite such risks? This study offers insights into how consumers’ motivated reasoning influences their willingness to purchase over social media. We focus on the social media store’s ease of use and perceived security as antecedents of trust. Specifically, we argue that perceiving a lack of ability to purchase from other channels would induce higher trust towards a social media store, despite low perceptions of ease and security of transaction. Data was collected from 224 Indonesian social media users who have been exposed to social media stores on Instagram. The findings suggest that when consumers perceive high control of how they could obtain desired goods, trust becomes a logical function of the perceived safety and ease of use of the shops. However, under low perceived control, consumers display high trust in social media shops despite not being convinced that they are safe nor easy to use. The findings extend our understanding about the antecedents of value creation in social commerce (Stephen and Toubia, 2010). Our results enrich prior literature by showing how motivated reasoning leads to biases in judgment to be in favor of desired goals (Blanton and Gerrard, 1997), and extends it in the novel context of social media commerce. Furthermore, by incorporating the literature on perceived behavioral control and motivated reasoning, the current study provides important empirical evidence for the presence of perceived control over alternate channels as a significant driver for trust towards social media shops. The current research also has a number of implications for social commerce providers in developing economies. This study shows that it is advantageous for managers to cultivate trust using interactivity and reliability to elicit a sense of security and ease of use. However, our findings also offers a caution for firms to not be lulled into a false sense of comfort by taking consumers’ trust at face value.

This study seeks to examine the effects of customer’s power motivation in the social media context, driven primarily by to extend the theory of how powerlessness induces compensatory consumption (Rucker and Galinsky, 2008). Power motivation refers to a chronic desire to strive and retain power (Maner, Gailliot, Butz, & Peruche, 2007). Given that positions of power are often associated with enjoyment of social and material rewards, naturally some individuals strive to achieve and retain positions of power as a satisfying goal in itself (Cassidy and Lynn, 1989). These ‘power-strivers’ are motivated to achieve status and superiority, and prone towards negative emotional states when confronted with situations that induce a state of powerlessness. The sense of inferiority have been shown to lead to greater desire for status-enhancing goods, such as luxury items with more prominently displayed brand names to restore their sense of wellbeing (Rucker and Galinsky, 2009). In the context of social media, research suggests that longterm exposure to upward social comparisons on social media resulted in lower levels of self-esteem (Vogel, Rose, Roberts, & Eckles, 2014). We argue that observing other people’s ‘highlight reel’ on social media may also negatively influence the consumers’ sense of power. Thus, these type of consumers are likely to be more receptive towards communications that advertise status-enhancing goods. However, this effect should be particularly pronounced in consumers who have high power motivation in the first place. Subsequently, our first proposition is that when exposed to negative social comparisons, power motivation would moderate the consumers’ sense of inferiority and lead to more positive attitude towards advertisements of luxury goods. Our second proposition points to mindfulness as a palliative to mitigate this sense of inferiority, since exercising mindfulness enables better self-regulation that contributes to behaviors and decisions that positive contribute towards one’s wellbeing (Brown and Ryan, 2003). Two experimental studies confirm our hypotheses that when exposed to upward social comparisons on social media, power-strivers exhibit more positive attitude towards advertisements of luxury goods, mediated by a sense of inferiority. In the second study we found that implicitly inducing mindfulness mitigates the effects of power motivation. This paper thus enriches the understanding of the role of consumers’ sense of power in the context of social media. Furthermore, we offer a balanced view that (1) unpacks how marketers could exploit social media features to induce desire for luxury goods but also (2) suggests ethical solutions that contributes to positive psychology literature in the context of social media usage.