Social media sites are making it very easy for social commerce to rapidly increase. Social commerce simply means that social media sites assist e-commerce. Online buying can now be done through social media sites. How would like it if you could immediately buy that beautiful stool you saw on Pinterest this morning?
In June, Pinterest’s rival: Instagram, announced that they will soon create a buy button as well. They will name it the “shop now” button. Snapchat, Tinder, and Google are also looking to expand to a buy button.
Personally, I would buy lots of things through Pinterest. Pinterest was made to create different boards of things you want, so I would guess that the majority of people will buy things on Pinterest. A new type of shopping addiction could even arise: a pin & buy addiction!
Despite Pinterest’s potential success, I question the success of a buy button on Snapchat, Tinder & Google. They would have to rely on selling items of advertisements and the goal of these social media platforms was never to create lists of things you want.
Would you buy something through social media websites?
Another question that arises is potential rivalry between social media sites and e-commerce sites like Amazon.com and Bol.com. What’s more attractive for brands than advertising their products on highly engaged social media websites? Could this potentially decrease sales for e-commerce websites? It could, but it could also establish new partnerships. For example, Pinterest can agree to use a “buy at Amazon” button, where everything Pinterest posts will be available on Amazon. This does mean that Amazon’s inventory would have to increase enormously…
The pro’s and con’s of the buy-button raise so many different questions. I’m interested to see what you guys think! Would you want a buy-button on your favorite social media website?
“Can Pinterest, Instagram Succeed at ‘Social Commerce'”? by Tom Risen