The existing literature on social commerce in emerging economies has relied largely on the empirical basis of broadcast-type platforms, namely Instagram, Facebook, and short video platforms, in which the seller shares content to a broad base of an anonymous audience. But this conceptual paper contends that this empirical basis is fundamentally inappropriate for understanding the present form of digital commerce found in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India, i.e., transactions via the WhatsApp platform, which represents a completely different messaging platform in terms of scale as well as structure compared to broadcast-type platforms. Based on the funnel theory (Lewis, 1898; Strong, 1925), the Trust Equation (Maister, Green, & Galford, 2000), and established patterns in the reseller-commerce ecosystem in India (represented by Meesho among others), this paper proposes a conceptual model known as the Compressed Trust Funnel (CTF) in which the traditional six stages of the purchasing funnel (Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Intent, Purchase, and Loyalty) collapse into three observable phases of Imported Trust, Proof and Particularisation, and Frictionless Commitment under high relational adjacency. In the study, there is an integration of information about the secondary industry, trust and social-commerce literature, as well as selling process theory, showing that the use of WhatsApp in commerce reverses the order of trust creation in commerce from that which usually happens, whereby trust has to be created by the buyer’s exposure to the brand, to the new case where trust is imported from existing social relationships.
WhatsApp Business, social commerce, Tier 2/3 India, sales funnel theory, relational adjacency, trust transfer, reseller commerce, digital consumer behaviour.
. The WhatsApp Effect: How Personal Messaging Platforms Are Restructuring the B2C Sales Funnel in Tier 2 and Tier 3 India. Indian Journal of Modern Research and Reviews. 2026; 4(6):316-322
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