The South East Asian Journal of Management The South East Asian Journal of Management What is the Role of T.E.A Concept Between Positive What is the Role of T.E.A Concept Between Positive Recommendation and Behavioural Intention to Purchase in Social Recommendation and Behavioural Intention to Purchase in Social Media? Media?

Research Aims: This study explores the antecedents of customers’ behavioural intention to purchase on the social media platform. In addition, the T.E.A concept, the group of consequences of positive recommendation (PR), is developed by amalgamating trust (T), easiness (E), and amusement (A). Design/Methodology/Approach: The data was collected from 260 random social media users from Myanmar. Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were employed to examine the observed variables, and structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques were used to estimate the hypotheses in AMOS software. Research Findings: The results disclose that the T.E.A concept is fully mediating between positive recommendation and customers’ purchase intention. Theoretical Contribution/Originality: This study gives clear direction for future research studies, notably, in the online shopping context by providing the T.E.A concept. Managerial Implication in the South East Asian Context: The retailers on social media develop effective marketing strategies based on T.E.A concept to attract more customers, especially from South East Asian countries. Research Limitations & Implications: The vivid limitation of this study is focusing on only the positive recommendation as an antecedent of the T.E.A concept and the findings of this study implicate both theoretically and practically the future research studies about customers’ behaviour in the online shopping context.


INTRODUCTION
During the recent pandemic, with technological advancement, the popularity of social networking sites (SNS), and the emergence of online shopping which has been one of the most widely engaging on the SNS platforms. Social media technology, nowadays, has become vital for every aspect of daily life and, most notably, Facebook, one of the popular social media, has become a platform for seeking, comparing, purchasing, and selling products and services anytime and anywhere (Tun, 2012). SNSs have become a popular platform for online shopping and magnified the capability for communication between online sellers and customers. Social media provides a new channel for businesses to display, present and sell their products and services, therefore, understanding social media marketing has become necessary.
The emergence of social media, advanced technological development of software and hardware, and unavoidable circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic lead to the growth of social commerce (Tun, 2021). Jiang et al. (2014) expressed that the willingness of customers to share information and experiences is one of the key points of the growth of social commerce. The more communication made by users through SNS, the more information exchanges, and SNSs will expand. Moreover, social media users are motivated to widely interact in social commerce by buying, selling, recommending, finding, and sharing specific products and services (Maia et al., 2018). Consequently, for online vendors from SNS platforms, it is vital to learn communication factors, one of the most important aspects that affects SNS users' behaviour (Barreda et al., 2015).
Acquiring and inquiring information about products or services are also a major purpose of using SNSs nowadays. Among SNS platforms, TikTok application, short video platform with one billion users, has become the new trend of not only entertainment with short video clips but also obtaining the products' information (Hasena & Sakapurnama, 2021). Many online shop owners are attempting to convey the business message to their customers and endeavour to transform the consuming behaviour of their customers through TikTok platforms. Nevertheless, Facebook and Instagram are prominent SNSs among social media users (Ventre et al., 2021). Instagram has risen as an SNS especially for sharing photos, being the pioneer of its kind; today, it has 1.2 billion users. Whatsoever, Facebook is the superior and enormous SNS with 2.93 billion users.
The rapid growth of social media technologies leads to the era of social commerce which will eventually become indispensable in the online mainstream. Akman and Mishra (2017) explained that social media platforms provide an effective tool for collaboration and communication for the ecosystem of businesses, customers, and suppliers, in the way of innovation for higher sales, lower Phyo Min Tun / The South East Asian Journal of Management SEAM © (2022) Vol. 16 No. 2 25 cost, and acquiring more customers. The rising number of social media users has given the opportunity to grow social commerce, particularly in major social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Similarly, Shen and Eder (2011) described that social commerce is a new type of ecommerce which performs on social media platforms that enable social activities such as communication, contribution, interaction, and sharing during buying or selling.
In the social commerce context, most of the prior empirical studies on behavioural intention did not build their research model based on a unified concept. Some studies focused on trust (Yin et al., 2019;Phungphol, 2019), some paid attention to amusement (Momani et al., 2018;Akman & Mishra, 2017), some researchers studied easiness (Samarasinghe & Maddumarala, 2019;Biucky et al., 2017), and others investigated on positive recommendations (Ying et al., 2021;Wang & Yu, 2017). Furthermore, Sukhu, Zhang, and Bilgihan (2015) used a research framework which is similar to the T.E.A concept in their study; however, they emphasised intention to share as the outcome and did not consider antecedents of the T.E.A concept in the SNS context.
On the other hand, there were several studies of customers' behaviour regarding online shopping in mobile commerce (Lin & Theingi, 2019) and social commerce (Tun, 2021) Wang and Yu (2017) asserted that customers heavily rely on informal information (e.g., comments, ratings, and suggestions), not the customised messages (e.g., reviews of social influencers, ordinary advertising content, formulated marketing messages), from their social peers regarding products or services before purchasing. Therefore, prior shopping experience Phyo Min Tun / The South East Asian Journal of Management SEAM © (2022) Vol. 16 No. 2 26 and purchase decisions are deeply rooted in online shopping nature. Informal or verbal communication also known as word-of-mouth, is an important information source generated by independent individuals (senders) and delivered to other individuals or potential customers (receivers) without control or manipulation by firms (Engel et al., 1969). The study of Barreda, Bilgihan, and Kageyama (2015) highlighted the significant effect of positive word-of-mouth on behavioural intention and their finding confirmed that customers' positive experience in shopping will generate positive recommendation. Moreover, the cognitive judgement of customers on the service such as the degree of ease of using the service heavily relies on the information contained in word-of-mouth (Sweeney et al., 2012). The new customers can perceive the experience of existing customers about the services from comments, feedback, and suggestions that are diffusing in the market. Positive recommendation is a robust origin of influence to support the customers in forecasting the purchasing experience (Ismail, 2011).

Positive recommendation (PR)
Positive recommendation can be considered as an expression of two parties such as "receiver" and "recommender". The customers can perceive the value of social media such as being easy to use, through the recommendations of the recommender. In this study, positive recommendation is adopted from the concept of positive word-of-mouth. Hence, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1: Positive recommendation has a significant positive effect on trust.

H2:
Positive recommendation has a significant positive effect on easiness.

H3:
Positive recommendation has a significant positive effect on amusement.

H4:
Positive recommendation has a significant positive effect on behavioural intention.

Trust (T)
Trust is pivotal in building a relationship between businesses and consumers, especially in the online business context (Tun, 2020;Athapaththu & Kulathunga, 2018). Likewise, Izogo and Jayawardhena (2018) referred to trust as the performance of online vendors to execute their commitments and the willingness of customers to be vulnerable based on their past experience in the manners of online retailers. Positive attitudes towards online trust will arise because of the degree of prior online shopping experience of customers such as trustworthiness, reliability, sincerity, and honesty of vendors, and receiving valuable and helpful information from online sellers (Armilawati et al., 2020). Moreover, trust can overcome social and technological barriers, and decrease risks. Beldad, Jong, and Steehouder (2010) asserted that the variations of online trust excessively depend on the outcome of the shopping experience. Also, Hajli (2013) explicitly stated that trust is one of the essential determinants of intention to purchase which leads to the following hypothesis: H5: Trust has a significant positive effect on behavioural intention. Venkatesh and Davis (2000) defined ease of use as the belief of the individual that using a specific system would be effortless. In this study, easiness can be referred to as the degree to which a customer accepts that it is easy to learn and purchase products or services through social media (Venkatesh et al., 2003). If customers know that online shopping platforms are easy to purchase products, they are more likely to adopt them. In the social commerce context, the previous findings suggested that easiness plays a critical role in making a purchase decision (Tun, 2021;Cho & Son 2019;Um, 2018). Moreover, Lu and Su (2009) found that easiness is positively related to purchase intention on online shopping websites. Therefore, this research focuses on investigating the plausibility of a positive effect of easiness on the intention to purchase on social media. Thus, the following hypothesis is developed:

Easiness (E)
H6: Easiness has a significant positive effect on behavioural intention.

Amusement (A)
In the present study, amusement, which catches the concept of enjoyment, refers to the degree to which purchasing through social media is perceived as being interesting, exciting, and enjoyable (Davis et al., 1992). He and Bond (2013) asserted that the impact of word-of-mouth can predict the actual enjoyment of consumption; therefore, the positive recommendation can improve amusement in the marketplace. Cho and Son (2019) also confirmed that the information which customers received can deliver a sense of amusement. Further, amusement is proposed as one of the key determinants of customers' intention to purchase on social media. Shen (2012) stated that online purchasing usually occurs from customers' intrinsic motivation as the result of frequently experiencing fun and entertainment during shopping. Hence, the following hypothesis has been formulated: H7: Amusement has a significant positive effect on behavioural intention. Athapaththu and Kulathunga (2018) recommended that social media is an information technology platform; therefore, purchase intention in social media should be determined by the behavioural intention construct developed by Davis (1989). Behavioural intention is based on certain beliefs and the prerequisite of the actual behaviour. Davis (1989) adopted the construct from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) which explains technology usage based on two major beliefs (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). The major purpose of this study is to identify Phyo Min Tun / The South East Asian Journal of Management SEAM © (2022) Vol. 16 No. 2 28 customers' behavioural intentions to purchase on social media, and investigate positive recommendation that affects the T.E.A concept, and lastly how that proposed concept affects purchase intention. Several prior studies (Ying et al., 2021;Samarasinghe & Maddumarala, 2019;Akman & Mishra, 2017) have confirmed the influences of trust, easiness, and amusement on behavioural intention to purchase. Therefore, to achieve the research objectives of this study, a research model (Figure 1) is proposed by combining the different constructs: positive recommendation, trust, easiness, amusement, and behavioural intention, based on prior literature reviews, and then it will be processed to test the theoretical chain (PR → T.E.A → BI). Thus:

Behavioural intention (BI)
H8: Trust is mediating between positive recommendation and behavioural intention.
H9: Easiness is mediating between positive recommendation and behavioural intention.

RESEARCH METHOD
An inductive reasoning quantitative research approach was employed by using a survey questionnaire with statements adapted from previous studies. The inductive study assists to formulate the hypotheses and ideas through knowledge and insights (Neuman, 2014). The question statements are measured by the five-point Likert scale to determine the attitude of respondents.
Target respondents for this study are Facebook users from Myanmar with prior purchasing experience via social media for the following reasons: Facebook is a luminary social media in Myanmar; the majority of social media users are on Facebook, therefore, they have a high potential Phyo Min Tun / The South East Asian Journal of Management SEAM © (2022) Vol. 16 No. 2 29 to have experience in purchasing products or services through social media before; and there could be avoided physical contact with respondents by using Facebook during the pandemic for collecting data by using the snowball sampling technique. In this study, both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are used to examine the validity and reliability of indicators and respective constructs. Also, structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to validate the hypothesised model and research hypotheses in SPSS and AMOS software. Hoelter (1983) suggested that the minimum data sampling size for calculating in SEM is 200, however, Stevens (2002) recommended that researchers should consider 15 data sampling sizes per indicator for SEM. Hence, a minimum data sampling size of 225 was considered sufficient to analyse fifteen observed indicators (Appendix) in the present study.

Profile of respondents
For this study, data were collected from social media users from Myanmar. Random 260 Facebook users participated in this study. After seven outliers (2.7%) were eliminated, the number of valid datasets available for analysis decreased to 253. The profile of the respondents is presented in

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)
An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to validate the observed variables for respective factors in the proposed research model (Figure 1) by using a Principal Components Analysis  All the values of standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis do not exceed plus or minus 2 according to the descriptive statistical analysis in SPSS software. The analysis results, therefore, can be asserted that participants of this study responded to questionnaire items normally and the dataset can be assumed as normality for T-test analysis which intends to investigate significant differences between the means of the indicators and the neutral value of 3 on their measurement scales (Table 3). The respondents strongly agree that social media enables them to find and purchase desired products or services quickly, and it is easy to learn the purchasing procedure on social media (E1, E2, E3). Social media users feel very enjoyable, exciting, and interested in purchasing products and services through social media (A1, A3, A4).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
As part of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) procedure, the measurement model for the proposed research model (Figure 2) is firstly built in AMOS software to examine convergent validity and discriminant validity according to the suggestion of Fornell and Larcker (1981).  Discriminant validity intends to confirm the degree to which a dimension and its variables differ from another dimension and its variables. The correlations between any two factors should be less than the square root of AVE of each factor according to Fornell and Larcker (1981). As presented in Table 6, the square root of AVE of factors (shown in bold text and highlighted) is greater than the correlation between the factors. Hence, the analysis results confirmed that the employed instrument for this study has satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity.

The results of hypotheses testing
The hypotheses were examined as presented in Figure 1 by using maximum likelihood (ML) estimation in AMOS software and the analysis results are concluded in Therefore, H5, H6, and H7, all the hypotheses were accepted. However, H4 was rejected because positive recommendation does not have a significant effect on behavioural intention. In order to identify the mediation variables, bootstrapping of 5000 samples was used and examined the indirect effects. The results of direct effects were unchanged, and the indirect effects were statistically significant, therefore, the extent of Variance Accounted For (VAF) was estimated to confirm mediation variables between positive recommendation and behavioural intention by following the guidance of Hair et al. (2016). VAF can be calculated by dividing indirect effect (x → m → y) over total effect (x → y) and the result can be interpreted as follows: greater than 20% represents mediation and less than 20% means no mediation.
Amusement has the highest mediation effect with 46% followed by trust with 28% and easiness Phyo Min Tun / The South East Asian Journal of Management SEAM © (2022) Vol. 16 No. 2 35 with 26%. The analysis results (Table 8) confirmed trust, easiness, and amusement as mediator variables. Therefore, H8, H9, and H10 were accepted. Further, trio factors had full mediation between positive recommendation and behavioural intention. Besides, the squared multiple correlations (R 2 ) of each endogenous variable in the proposed model are shown in Table 8.
Behavioural intention has the highest variance amount with .725 followed by amusement with .639, trust with .505, and easiness with .488, which were explained by its exogenous factors. PR → A → BI .346 *** 46% Yes Accepted T (R 2 = .505), E (R 2 = .488), A (R 2 = .639), BI (R 2 = .725) Note: *** means p < 0.001, ** means p < 0.01 The value of model fit indices for both measurement and structural models are shown in Table   9. The model fit indices aim to provide evidence of fitness between the proposed research model and the data (Hair et al., 2016;Bagozzi et al., 1991). Firstly, the measurement model (  to amusement according to the findings because enjoyment and pleasure attract customers the most. Therefore, the majority of online retailers must present and launch attractive and interesting entertainment programs on their social media pages such as online photo contests, entertainment videos, live videos, and beneficial content. Besides, sellers on social media should note that giving discount coupons, offering loyalty awards, and entertainment-based marketing activities are feasible to create more amusement to attract more shoppers.
Since the social media landscape is an online platform with a lack of tangible and physical interaction; therefore, trust is necessary. Trust construct is the second most important factor to attract more customers, and sellers are needed to be reliable and honest. Thus, vendors must provide accurate product information, reasonable prices for products, and reliable customer services. Customers, most notably, from South East Asian countries always tend to find and purchase products or services in the easiest ways. Also, the result of this study indicates that customers want to purchase more if it is easy. Hence, e-retailers must formulate an uncomplicated and clear purchasing process such as easy to view the product information, the price comparison, the order placement, make the payment, and select the shipping method.
Although the positive recommendation is not directly crucial for buying decisions in this study, vendors should duly note that it is still a significant factor influencing the T.E.A concept, which will eventually lead to purchase intention. This gives the managerial tip for online sellers that they should carefully handle and respond to all the negative feedback and comments from customers.
Further, online retailers should endeavour and be well-managed all possible methods like formulating referral marketing programs, creating public rating systems on the overall shopping experience, and developing review platforms (e.g., online forums, blogs, and social media groups), where potential customers can learn from positive recommendations and boost the T.E.A concept.
By doing so, online retailers can gain higher customer loyalty and reduce customer acquisition costs in South East Asian countries.

THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS
According to the analysis result, all the hypotheses are supported except H4, therefore, the T.E.A concept, an aggregation of factors, is valid and there can be confirmed that T.E.A is mediating between positive recommendation and purchase intention in social media. In the T.E.A concept, amusement has the highest positive effect on behavioural intention to purchase and it is the most influenced by positive recommendation, followed by trust and easiness. Nevertheless, the T.E.A concept is imperative for the customers to decide to buy the product or service through the social media platform. In a social media environment, the lack of tangible interaction between customers and vendors in online purchasing procedures creates trust as an essential factor and it assists to eliminate uncertainty and risks (Ventre et al., 2021). Besides, this study confirmed that purchase intention on social media platforms depends on the level of reliability of online vendors and it corresponded to the result of Tun (2021). (2021) asserted that if the customers perceive the shopping experience as pleasurable, retailers will gain purchase intention from their customers. Also, the study of Akman and Mishra (2017) reported that enjoyment was the factor that positively affects purchase intention in the online shopping context and suggested that social media should be equipped with features that render the attitude of the customers about amusement and excitement significantly. Also, the finding of the present study is consistent with the previous study of Um (2018) and social media users tend to buy more when they feel pleasant during shopping at social commerce sites.

Prabowo and Aji
According to the analysis result, easiness is considered an important perspective that affects purchase intention in social commerce, and the finding is supported by the study of Momani, Yafooz, and Jamous (2018).
Despite having no significant direct effect on buying decisions, positive recommendation has indirect positive effects through the T.E.A concept, a group of mediators. The finding of the present study can be assumed that when customers receive an abundance of positive recommendations, they will tend to trust vendors and purchase products, Kumar et al. (2020) reported a similar result. In this study, easiness plays a mediator between positive recommendation and behavioural intention to purchase on social media, and the finding aligns with the study of Tun (2021). In addition, this study reveals that it is necessary to consider the effects of positive recommendation on amusement and easiness because the customers learned about the experiences in purchasing through informal or verbal communications (Ismail, 2011).

CONCLUSION
This study manifests the role of the T.E.A concept, most notably, between positive recommendation and customers' behavioural intention to purchase products or services which are offered on social media platforms. The primary novelty of this study is the T.E.A concept by integrating trust (T), easiness (E), and amusement (A). Further, the present study can be concluded that online sellers with T.E.A will have more success in the online shopping landscape, and vendors from social media should establish the best approaches to employ the T.E.A concept, which implies that "Better TEA, Greater Sales".
This research study emphasises factors that are appropriated to the online shopping context and proposes a productive research direction for future researchers, especially, that when the customers assume that shopping on the social media platform is pleasurable, view sellers are reliable, obtain non-muddle purchasing procedures, and perceive the positive recommendation abundantly from others, they are likely to buy the products and services on social media. In summary, sellers and vendors on social media play a crucial role in ensuring positive experience of customers, resulting in customers' decision of purchasing products or services.