An appraisal mechanism for a social marketplace

Social networks have become indispensable in our daily lives, and have significant implications for the development of electronic commerce. In centralized e-marketplaces, buyers face two main problems in purchasing decisions. Firstly, for some products, sellers do not provide product information. Secondly, buyers can be deceived by fake reviews or ratings manipulated by malicious providers. In this research, after analyzing users’ social activities, we propose an appraisal mechanism for the social marketplace, which customers can use to find products and to obtain credible referrals. The proposed mechanism can effectively discover suitable and trustworthy sellers to expedite the online purchasing process and enable social commerce to flourish.