India is all set to witness a manufacturing boom. Thanks to the tremendous advancements in technology, people can do away with the procedural hassles of offline-shopping. With everything going online, online retailing or e-retailing has become the order of the day. ‘Innovation’ being the characteristic trademark of the constantly evolving E-commerce industry, it is imperative for online retailers or e-retailers to acquaint themselves with the latest buzzword of the year “Social shopping” or “Social commerce.”
Understanding Social Shopping
To express in simple words, social shopping or social commerce is a perfect blend of social media and e-commerce. What does the activity of social shopping essentially entail? In the lexicon of electronic commerce industry, the term social shopping is a slang term for ‘network shopping.’ Shoppers’ friends, groups and communities are involved. As the appellation profoundly implies, social shopping is done on social shopping platforms
Categories of Social Shopping
The much touted world’s favorite activity of social shopping can be broadly categorized into:
- Group social shopping
- Recommendation engines
- Social shopping communities
- Shared social shopping
- Social Shopping Marketplaces
Group Social Shopping: This category of social shopping encompasses merchandise clubs and warehouses. As the name of the category suggests, groups of potential shoppers are encouraged to do shopping at wholesale prices. The best example is Costco. It is noteworthy to mention that Costco, the third largest retailer has as many as 672 warehouses spread throughout the realms of United States.
Recommendation Engines: This category of social shopping is all about soliciting words of counsel, opinions of friends, recommendations of fellow customers, following the reviews of celebrated companies such as Amazon and then indulging in shopping. The year 2015 has witnessed the ingress of several social shopping startups. Needless to say, the startups are encouraging customers to do social shopping only after conversing with acquaintances and social commerce pundits.
Social Shopping Communities: Shoppers leverage the sagacity of the crowds before doing social shopping. Aggregate information such as product reviews, prices, comparison of prices, quality standards, deals etc. are displayed on various custom shopping lists. Fashion communities have carved a niche in this space. Activity-based clubs also come under this category. Social shopping communities aren’t limited to fashion industry.
Shared social shopping: This category of social shopping is all about ad-hoc collaborative shopping. Collaborator encourages a group of potential buyers to engage in the activity of social shopping. More often than not, collaborators communicate with retailers and then encourage groups of shoppers to do social shopping.
Social Shopping Marketplaces: This category of social shopping is all about bringing sellers and buyers into a common online forum. Sellers can display their products and buyers can buy from the available list of products. Marketplace script vendors don the hats of e-commerce facilitators thereby encouraging buyers to engage in social shopping. To all intents and purposes, you may bring your friends on the web while you shop. It is all about experiencing the joy of online shopping!
Benefits of Social Shopping
- Retailer benefits: Apart from the conventional sources of revenue generation i.e., apart from generating revenue through advertisements and pay-per-click models, retailers can make some quick money by the mode of user interaction. Many social shopping sites concentrate on winning the hearts of customers. Once they win approval of customers, site owners ask for rave reviews and genuine promotional recommendations. These are shared on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Thanks to social media marketing efforts coupled with viral marketing endeavors, retailers will be able to live the dollar dream. Money thus comes easy to itching palms and retailers are likely to spend their time taking stock of their finances with precision.
- Customer benefits: Nothing beats social shopping as customers can solicit the opinions of their acquaintances, fellow customers etc. This results in value-driven shopping. Moreover, they need not visit multiple websites for multiple categories and variants of products. A social shopping site is an assortment of all desirable products. Price comparison of multiple products can be done. There is something more in the offing- extensive updates on what other people are talking about and what’s trending in a particular industry. Whenever customers share information on their social media profiles and spread the good word about a particular brand, they are often rewarded with some tangible assets by the brand personnel.
Admire from Ecommercemix: Trendsetter in Social Shopping and trailblazer in designing, developing and configuring Social Shopping marketplace scripts
Most of the social shopping marketplaces are like country cousins. Despite diverse ownership, they vie for the same pie, most often undermining the efforts and endeavors of competitors in their relentless rush to boost to the top line. They do not have the wherewithal to develop and configure unexcelled social marketplace scripts. What distinguish Admire from Ecommercemix are the following ‘a cut above the rest’ features:
- Social Media Integration: The very essence of social shopping lies in inviting friends, community members and fellow customers. Not astonishingly, this demands social media integration of premier platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. This is a feature too often belittled by parochial minded self-claimed social shopping pundits.
- Gift cards and coupons: According to confused.com, men are terrible shoppers. It is the same reason why they request women to do shopping on their own. On certain occasions such as festivities, birthday parties, ceremonies and weddings, a good gift is an absolute must have. Men can invite their better-halves and thus engage in social shopping. As a matter of fact, women since ages have been known for their best bargaining skills. Admire has a host of fabulous gifting options
- Buyer-Seller discussion board: Admire has a unique Buyer-Seller discussion board. Customers can discuss and negotiate for best bargains. Post-purchase support is also in the offing.
- Community forums: Customers who have purchased from sellers can give their feedback and suggestions on community forums. To all other potential buyers, this feedback can come handy at the time of purchase thereby leveraging the notion of ‘informed purchase’
- Reviews and Ratings: Customers can review and rate each and every feature of the social shopping marketplace script.
Please take the trouble of visiting this link for a thorough understanding of our marketplace’s amazing features http://www.ecommercemix.com/blog/buy-sell-script/