Social Shopping Makes an Advance
Remember how Shawnte influenced my purchase of some truly fabulous boots, similar to those worn by Mary J Blige during the Inaugural Celebration? We were two of many who shared the political experience using social media. Before Mary J's song was done, Shawnte had delivered links via Facebook for the desired boots. That was social shopping, but now retailers are responding to this trend with social commerce. Some fan pages in Facebook and MySpace will now include a feature to shop within the page, enabling fans to add products to their shopping carts. Social has gone direct.
- Merchants on Facebook and MySpace are adding e-commerce stores to their fan pages, hoping users will scan lists of for-sale items and services—such as floral bouquets, hand-crafted jewelry and spa treatments—and click a button to add them to online shopping carts. (MySpace is owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)
- The e-commerce trend, also being adopted by large companies such as Hallmark Cards Inc. and Brooks Brothers Inc., so far appears limited to Facebook and MySpace, where applications for selling directly to consumers started cropping up in 2008.
- For e-commerce via social media to work, "You've got to spend money on advertising to make people aware that [your fan page] exists," says Larry Chiagouris, a marketing professor at Lubin School of Business at Pace University in New York.
- Whether consumers will embrace shopping on social-media sites remains to be seen. Facebook, approaching 500 million users, recently came under fire over its privacy policies. Some shoppers may feel uncomfortable entering their credit-card information on the site, while others may be wary of making a purchase that could be broadcast on users' news feeds or profiles.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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