We have all been in touch with it, but probably have never heard of it before: social commerce. Social commerce can be defined as the fusion of social media and e-commerce (Marsden, 2010). It goes beyond the familiar, sometimes simple, online shopping. It is shopping via Internet with social media, or often on social media. Which can be a threat to the original retailers, who are still selling their products in a physical shop. But if it’s for Rigby to decide, not any longer. Even the physical retailers can create an omnichannel experience online. Many organizations in fact did. For example Office Depot which integrated a successful review environment on its website which resulted in a gain of revenue of almost 200%! Or Premier Beauty, a beauty salon which offers discount via Groupon and is very active on both Facebook and Twitter. This elaboration of business has ensured that Premier Beauty had an increase of 85% in its customers.
Even though Office Depot and Premier Beauty are both successful examples of social commerce, they differ extremely from each other. Where the beauty salon focused on the social media aspect, the office supplier emphasized on the reviews. These details are both strengths and weaknesses of the companies. Whereas the accounts of Facebook and Twitter are a huge strength, they do not give customers the opportunity to review their products and services. The same goes on for Office Depot. Their review environment is also a huge strength, but do not give their customers the probability to be social with other customers. Besides social media is a convenient way of bringing a product to people. Facebook- and Twitter-users are already familiar with the platform. And bringing the product to people is always easier than the other way around. People like to be in their comfort zone, especially when it comes to buying products on the Internet.
So the two examples of social commerce both have their strengths and weaknesses. But the strength of one it the weakness of the other and conversely. Therefore these two companies can learn from each other in order to be a company which uses social commerce at its best.
References
Marsden, P. (2010). Social Commerce: Monetizing social media. Syzygy Group. White Paper.
Rigby, D. (2011). The future shopping. Harvard Business Review, 89(12) 64-75.
