Does social climate matter? On friendship groups in social commerce

• Introduces collaborative shopping into a social media context.
• Uses ‘member intention’ to specify the collaborative purchase behavior.
• Determines the important role of social climate in shaping group members’ value perceptions.
• Figure out the influence of individual’s value perceptions on consumer’s collaborative purchase behavior.
• Use uses and gratifications theory (UGT) to explain users’ purchase behavior within the WeChat.

This article contributes to e-commerce research by providing an enriched understanding of how social climate of friendship group affects members’ intention to purchase and their actual purchase behavior. Data collected from 215 group members within a WeChat friendship group show that social climate significantly affects group members’ social value, hedonic value, self-discovery value, informational value and their member intention to purchase together. This study highlights the importance of the proximal social network in voluntary settings, illustrating that social climate influences friendship group members’ purchase behavior through affective channels rather than through cognitive channels.