Now in this post I want to talk about Social Commerce. 

 Social Commerce is a buzz, evoking a fusion of Social Media and  E-commerce.  Social Commerce  is a subset of electronic commerce that employs social media tools to assist online buying and selling. Some examples of social commerce are user ratings and reviews, social networking tools, online stores in social networking and social shopping,as mentioned before.

On the web we find different definitions of Social Commerce, I write here some of these:

“social commerce enabling consumers to browse,view and add products to a shopping cart, within the context of a social site,like Facebook or a blog.” Fumi Matsumoto (Allurent)

“social commerce connect and foster active partecipation with customers to help improve your customer experience,includinf ratings and reviews,blogs as well as forums and communities”. (IBM)

But what are the reasons for doing Social commerce?

Fumi Matsumoto CTO of Allurent, the company market leader in powering superior online shopping experiences, in the E-commerce Times talk about social commerce, that offers 7 reasons for doing it. http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/68744.html.

I briefly write here what are these reasons that Matsumoto consider important for doing Social Commerce:

1) Your customer are increasingly spending time.                                                                                                     

2) Shopping is often a social activity and people will want to shop online in the same way.

3)Peer validation that is built into social commerce, and for many shoppers it’s important.

4)Produce discovery is more fun and encourage to impulse purchase when in a social context.

5) If we don’t have presence on social media,your competitors will take illegal the social bran mind-share.

6) Social it’s the mosre cost-effective way to capture traffic and market reach.

7)Social media gives you the ability to extract data and obtain market intelligence more effectively.

Although the concept of social shopping and the sites related to the subject are still a new phenomenon on the web, Veedom, compared to the competition such as StyleFeeder or MyFaveShop, adopt a new passive method. In this way it suggests products to its members without that their costumers try to find anything.

At the beginning, the only information the system needs are the interests of the subscribers from which the algorithms develop a profile of interest. Competing sites, by contrast, are much more tied to a concept of research which may be browsing the profiles of other users, or browsing by tags, or by typing a real key and then move from there through tags, user profiles etc… In other words, the competition behaves much closer to satisfying a specific need and this when the user accesses the site rather than pure discovery products and satisfy their latent needs, an area in which Veedow is focusing much.

Another important component is represented by the interaction between users who may be friends or just people with common tastes and interests.
First of all every user can save and share with the community their products, drawn from any site on the Net.
Moreover, every product can be rated, commented and tagged. Veedow does not sell products directly, however, shows that its users. The role of the service is rather to make people discover these products and links to sites from which you can then make the purchase.

The social shopping will become increasingly important, so as to become a real cornerstone in the rules for online purchase.
It’s important to consider that internet is not exclusively search-centric and the personal suggestions are important too. Obviously, research and discovery are not antagonistic or mutually exclusive, but more or less appropriate depending on context and user needs. This concept is now saying thanks to applications like Digg, Last.fm, StumbleUpon, and – why not – Veedow.

Startup Camp-London-Veedow

Unlike the many retail sites that display products for sale, users who register with social shopping services typically create their own pages to collect information on items they find, in this way they create product lists in which they recommend their favorites, often with a strong emphasis on what’s hot, new and exciting. And insiders know that listing their own products on the right social shopping sites can build buzz that leads to sales.

This accessible form of word-of-mouth marketing offers a wealth of opportunities for entrepreneurs with limited budgets. Social shopping sites may generate revenue not only from advertising and click through, but also by sharing information about their users with retailers.

Sites like ThisNext and a handful of services like Kaboodle.com, Wists.com and StyleHive.com are spearheading this new category of e-commerce.
Kaboodle.com

Marketers can in fact measure statistics easily and inexpensively. They can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience through different methods: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play… and so on. The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, visit a website, and perform a targeted action. Such measurement cannot be achieved through billboard advertising. But on the other hand social network marketing requires customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media.

Even though the great diffusion of internet and many networks that nowadays are more and more conditioning our lives, a big mistrust is always present.
So how the traditional consumer can be really involved in these kinds of promotion? And how the mistrust of doubtful consumers can be overcome?