Leveraging social media for electronic commerce in Asia: Research areas and opportunities

The last decade has seen phenomenal growth of electronic commerce in Asia. An important driving force has been the parallel rise of social media, enabling pervasive interactions among consumers and between consumers and firms. This article provides an overview of the current state of development of social media in Asia. We also survey the literature on social media that has been produced by authors in this region. The research covers a variety of topics and issues, including: user behavior with social media, the impacts of social media, and the issues arising from its use. It also identifies a number of future research opportunities that fall into these areas. The Asia region is filled with high potential for promising research regarding how social media may be leveraged for e-commerce. This article calls for more research attention to be given to social media-related e-commerce research, and the discovery of new knowledge related to the connections between social media and e-commerce that are unique to the Asia region.