What is Social Commerce? Define Social Commerce.
Social commerce is the next step in the evolution of eCommerce. Social commerce can be briefly described as commerce activities mediated by social media. In social commerce, people do commerce or intentionally explore commerce opportunities by participating and/or engaging in a collaborative online environment. As a relatively new phenomenon first widely acknowledged in 2005, social commerce presents new opportunities to examine issues related to information/content, business strategies, management, technologies, and people’s behaviour.
Keywords: Define Social Commerce, Social Media, Social CRM, Social Commerce Strategic
Social commerce brings the immediacy of traditional retail to the online shopping experience and in so doing provides brands with the opportunity to directly connect with customers and express their unique personality.
eCommerce stores that communicate with customers, take advantage of product positioning and discovery tools built into social media platforms, and foster authentic customer endorsements via user-generated content see increased sales and retention rates.
A form of electronic commerce which uses social networks to assist in the buying of selling of products. This type of commerce utilises user ratings, referrals, online communities and social advertising to facilitate online shopping.
Examples of Social Commerce Strategies
Social commerce is about creating active communities. See a few examples of social commerce strategies:
1. Participatory Commerce
Model that let consumers directly participate in designing or funding of a product. Let shoppers contribute money to creative projects they like. Other companies turn to their customers for inspiration for new product ideas. Participatory commerce is about customers getting involved, hands-on, to influence the final outcome of a project.
2. Social Shopping Personate: Hanging out with your buddies
Social shopping involves online shopping with family and friends. It’s an effort to pretend an offline experience of hanging out with your buddies at the shopping mall. Organisations clone these experiences with online chat and forum features. Elevate the online shopping experience by having real-time conversations with your customers or let customers share photos and submit reviews.
3. Concierge Gives Every Shopper Assistance
Similar to offline, sometime shoppers need a little assistance. Social commerce method that lets create shopping lists, and then people can shop and get advice from the experts recommendations. A concierge gives shoppers a personal experience. For example new members take a fashion quiz, and then receive weekly suggestions based on their specific tastes.
4. Peer Recommendations Promote Online Word-of-mouth
According to Moz, data uncovered that 67% of consumers are impacted by online reviews. Allowing customers to not just write and read reviews, but share them with friends across social networks, allows people to recommend their favourite brands and products online.
5. This word-of-mouth marketing boosts trust and spreads your brand.
Now that we have defined social commerce strategies, let’s look at how you can benefit from it. Using social media in order to increase your sales can be achieved through:
| Action Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Visibility | Because social media is perfect to extend the reach of your offers. |
| Reputation | Because online conversations are really effective means to build a great brand image. |
| Proximity | Because social media allows you to shorten the distance between your brand / products and your potential customers. |
| Contextualisation | Because it is all about reaching the right customer at the right place and the right moment. |
| Recommendation | Because there are numerous social platforms to help you choose your next purchase through photo-powered. |
| Contextualisation | Because it is all about reaching the right customer at the right place and the right moment. |
| Customer care | Because social media is where people ask for help or complain about their shopping experiences. Hence, there is no better place to demonstrate your love for your clients. |
Example of social media Platforms to use for Social Commerce:
- Create a Facebook Shop. Give your brand fans a quick and easy way to purchase your products directly on Facebook.
- Make a Shopable Instagram. Use a tool that can recreate your Instagram feed on-site and make it shoppable.
- Upload Buyable Pins on Pinterest. Help customers discover your products when they search on Pinterest by enabling Buyable Pins.
- Twitter sell to customers directly. Any product that you’ve tweeted will include a buy button, which means your audience can buy from you without leaving Twitter.
Define Social Commerce: Impact on eCommerce Companies?
At the writing of this article, the truth is that no one can tell you, whether or not to experiment with social commerce because, well, it’s an experiment. Even tough some companies report having good results from including social commerce strategies.
If you’re killing it right now without social commerce and have higher priority hypotheses to test, focus on that. But keep an eye on this ‘social commerce’ it’s here to stay for a long time and will mature as it’s still very much in its infancy. Keep up with the latest features, maybe even play around with an account. But do you absolutely need to be on this bandwagon today? Your choice.
If you do decide to experiment with social commerce, do your research on social platforms. You need to understand who your audience is, what they like and dislike, how they prefer to buy etc.
Future of Social Commerce
Online retailers, too, are continually experimenting with new models and marketing methods to allow for greater peer-to-peer and group-based interactions, aware that recommendations from friends (and to a lesser degree, strangers) can play a powerful role in shopping. According to Gartner, 74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide their purchases.
Examples of how organisations are applying social practices to effectively engage their customers are highlighted
By James W. Cortada, Eric Lesser and Peter J. Korsten
| Method of engagement | Social capabilities | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Providing answers | Provide self-service and agent-based support via social platforms when and how customers want to be connected | Improved response time; greater data capture; higher customer satisfaction |
| Mining conversations | Capture and analyze conversations to determine cus- tomer sentiment, purchasing preferences and overall market trends | More effective marketing resource allocation; increased revenue opportunities |
| Crowdsourcing insights | Customize products and services using online social tools and allow other customers to rank and review new designs | Identify new offerings and trends with market potential |
| Influencing influencers | Work with individuals with significant followers to obtain unique insights and gain mindshare | Unearth emerging trends and increase word of mouth promotion/sales |
Source: The business of social business. IBM Institute for Business Value
Define Social Commerce Summary
Social commerce success requires retailers to understand each shopper’s frame of mind. From the customer’s perspective a retail site is ultimately like any other: users come there to consume and interact with content. By giving shoppers more content to consume and more ways to interact with that content, a retailer gives the user what he or she is looking for. In return, the shopper rewards the retailer with increased brand loyalty and preference, which can be demonstrated through higher traffic volumes, engagement metrics and conversion rates.
IBM Future of Social Commerce PDF Download
IBM Australia Digital Future PDF Download
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