Beyond Price and Reputation: Hedonic Experience, Social Interaction, and Consumer Behavior in Digital Commerce

Abstract

The competitive edge of digital commerce portals is not confined merely to price and reputation anymore. The whole focus lies on creating an engaging experience for the consumers. The need of the hour, thus, is to study the role played by hedonism and sociality in shaping consumer behavior. This study examines the influence of price advantage, reputation, hedonic experience, and social interaction on customer satisfaction, and evaluates the effect of customer satisfaction on repurchase intention and electronic word-of-mouth in digital commerce. A quantitative explanatory design was adopted using secondary cross-sectional survey data from 253 digital commerce consumers. Construct scores were developed from Likert-scale items. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, and robust regression with HC3 heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors were applied to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings revealed that hedonic experience significantly influenced customer satisfaction, followed by social interaction. In contrast, price advantage and reputation did not demonstrate significant effects after robust estimation. Customer satisfaction significantly predicted both repurchase intention and electronic word-of-mouth. The results indicate that experiential and social dimensions are stronger drivers of satisfaction and post-purchase behavior than traditional economic and reputational cues. The findings suggest that digital commerce platforms should prioritize enjoyable, interactive, and socially engaging experiences to strengthen customer satisfaction, repeat purchasing, and positive online recommendations. The study contributes to digital consumer behavior literature by highlighting the growing importance of experience-based and interaction-based engagement in digital commerce.