The state of flow in social commerce: the importance of flow consciousness

Flow has been widely studied in different disciplines and contexts; but there is a lack of consensus about its dimensionality, measurement and structure. This research theorises that flow is a second-order multidimensional factor composed of three dimensions: concentration, enjoyment and temporal distortion. This investigation studies whether users who have reached the state of flow in social commerce have really been aware of it, studying user's flow consciousness. The empirical results confirm the three-dimensionality of the concept, through the rival models technique, corroborate the second-order reflective structure and show that the more intense the experience of flow when surfing, the more conscious the users are of having reached the state of flow. This study contributes to setting up the basis for measuring flow, defining its structure and enabling future investigations to focus on how flow consciousness influences the commercial success of a social commerce platform.