International Conference Internet Technologies & Society 2017 AN EXPLORATION OF THE FACTORS THAT IMPACT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN SOCIAL COMMERCE WEBSITES Hasan Beyari, Ahmad Abareshi and Ismail Elferjani RMIT University, Australia ABSTRACT Social commerce explains a subgroup of e-commerce, including the utilization of online media, social media that support the social relations and input of the user to assist in the sales and purchase of services and products. This study explores the relationships affecting the customer experience phenomenon with respect to social commerce. The relationships between factors associated with the customer experience as well as the role it plays in the social commerce have been measured using a survey method. A total of 372 students from Saudi Arabia studying in Australia and present at the Saudi Arabia UBT University were surveyed. To test the measurement and structural model as well as study the interconnection between variables, the study made use of partial least square (PLS). The results show that the entire Trust and Social Influence dimensions have a considerable relationship with customer experience. In addition, the Word of Mouth was another variable that impacted the Trust and Social Influence extremely strongly and in the specific situation of the social commerce. This research also recognizes that in the social commerce field, several factors influence the customer experience in a different manner in comparison to the factors that influence the customer experience in usual face-to-face transactions of buying and selling. This research is anticipated to help businesses in putting their strategies to book, while overly pioneering the development of the social commerce businesses. The results obtained from this study will add some facts to the present literature relating to social commerce and also serve as a chance for researchers to cut into more profoundly into the different factors that relate with the customer experience in the social commerce. KEYWORDS Social Commerce, Customer Experience, Social Influence, Trust, Saudi Arabia, Australia 1. INTRODUCTION There is a possible continuation in the trend of great changes in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) of the twentieth century. Through the past few decades, the basic innovations include, the development of the Internet and speedy technological evolution – remain the instrument for new ways to communicate, which changed the business mode for transaction (Canavan et al. 2007). The majority of IT advancements can be linked to the benefits from the Internet growth. Also, web 2.0 gave individuals the opportunity to interact on the Internet (Hajli 2013). Therefore, with the emergence of this newly developed social environment or media, an extremely high number of people globally interact and information is exchanged in real time. This is a kind of technology that has enabled various businesses to develop and remain strong. In this present day, consumers now have the power, since they can both inform and ensure they are armed with sufficient knowledge prior to making purchasing decisions. Also, consumers are able to manage their publicity and thus, the businesses reputation through the word-of-mouth approach is strong with other consumers. Therefore, this makes businesses to factor directly in consumers more than before as their growth is based on the consumer’s experience. When the idea of Social Commerce (SC) was originated, it could be traced to the Web 2.0 technology development and the operations of the social network (Yang et al. 2013). Furthermore, the SC was initially introduced far back as 2005 on Yahoo website and then represented the combination of the social networking activities and the shopping activities via the social media (Wang & Zhang 2012). This study investigates the factors influencing customer experience in SC, while also serving as a contribution to the current literature to 51