Success in Social Commerce - Research Paper Example

? Success in Social Commerce AFFILIATION: Social commerce is a type of business arbitrated by social means and is the converging of offline and online environments. As a comparatively latest trend, social commerce has progressed swiftly in its performance, still, has acquired modest attention from researchers in the Information Systems discipline. With its popularity in commerce as well as lives of individuals, social commerce presents plenty of exploratory chances that may have both hypothetical and applicative importance and repercussions. The goal of this paper is to catch the researchers’ attention by explaining the distinctiveness of social commerce and its future prospects. By the end, we draw the growth pattern of social commerce chronologically on the basis of business articles and educational publications starting from 2005 to 2011. A structure that unites people, administration, expertise, and the information scope is used to present an organized study of the progress of social commerce. Our assessment portrays that from 2005, the year the terminology social commerce had begun to be used, suppositions and perception of individual in social commerce moved from a universal depiction of human nature to an intensive research with diverse perspectives from social psychology to social culture, and economic environments. According to the administrative aspect, business plans and model develop from the short-tail to long-tail thinking with innovative notions such as branded social communities, forte social networks/communities, niche brands along with joint purchasing, and multichannel social systems (Wang & Zhang, 2012). According to our assessment, the niche social networks/communities give power to smaller businesses in the cut throat commerce world. Success in Social Commerce Introduction Alongside the attractiveness and profitable achievement of social networking sites and different kinds of social channels, the term social commerce was envisaged in the year 2005, portraying a rising phenomenon (Beisel, 2006). For argument sake, we precisely define social commerce as a type of business that is arbitrated by social media. Social commerce uses social channels that assist social communication and involvement of the users to support activities in the business of different products and services conducted both online and offline (Afrasiabi & Benyoucef, 2010). It signifies prospective business opportunities that merge shopping and social networking via social media. The social media users enjoy many online activities that are similar to the offline activity mode, the online difference being the mode of attaining the activities, such as online shopping, online interaction with friends and so on. The challenge for the social media is to give a satisfactory experience to online users so that they switch to the online mode of shopping and socializing. Referral economy is a new category of e-commerce that is basically gaining from the positive aspects of information technology (Harkin, 2007). Discussion Social commerce where vendors advertise through social networks or intensely incorporate social media into the purchase procedure is already consumed by several major brands globally. Many brands advertise their products and services on the social media platforms and with this advertisement they are able to reach a wide audience. It is little in terms of profits but has a vivid – although uncertain – future (Brito, 2011). In technological terms, IT competencies and potential for social commerce develops from blogs, to social networking sites, to sites that share media and to smart phones. Despite the fact that Facebook becomes a moneymaking platform, developing the idea of f-commerce, Google and Twitter became tough competitors with immense possibilities as well (Gordon, 2007). The competition level in the social media platforms is immense and each social media platform has to provide some unique feature which is not present in other platforms. The substance in social commerce grows from peer-generated, to society-generated, to user and marketer co-produced to worldwide crowd sourced (Hwang, 2009). Our assessment recognizes several concepts, terminologies, viewpoints, and angles regarding social commerce and its link with other popular notions such as e-commerce. Considering the advancement of social commerce, we present possible future direction for investigation and practice. In the perspective of the buying channel, social media is likely to work best at creating alertness and curiosity, persuading consumer preferences and then attaching consumers’ after purchase excitement by encouraging them. The social media is able to make consumers make repeat visits on the site and also encourage other users to use the platform as well. As social expertise become stronger and users valve into social media as a habitual part of things they do online and offline, there are new chances to convert the social currency into hard currency (Kooser, 2008). Here are the reasons why social commerce matters in the current scenario: Soon Facebook will be having billion of users. Marketers need to understand this situation and adapt to this new media consumption pattern or ignore it completely. Billion of users is a very huge market share and successful advertisement and promotion on this website can lead to tremendous amount of profits for the organisation. Word of mouth is taken as the base of social media. For commercial activities, it is considered as one of the most important tool. Through word of mouth advertising, the potential consumer gets highly convinced because there is someone who is affirming the advantage and usefulness of the social media platforms. Social commerce is merely built upon these principles only and joins all the dots (Baekdal, 2011). It can also help you with your marketing objectives. The potential of social commerce was first explored by retail and fashion brands. Various major brands have ventured into different forms of social commerce and have achieved their specific goals through it. Branding and advertising of the brands allowed the potential customers to view the advertisement and then accordingly purchase the product. Social commerce has also paved way for online transactions. Customers are now at ease in making online payments through the different mode offered in the cyber world. You can generate new fans through Facebook commerce. Mobile social commerce can help you with retention as well as attracting new customers through empowering of advocates (Collier, 2012). Mobile can also help you boost your offline sales together with group buying programs. Group buying has become such a hit that you are not always required to be social as now you are in a constant hunt for the best deals. It does not matter if people are actually buying the deals, such deals are always coming in the market and very few marketers are catering to this consumer behavior (Fueur, 2010). The main purpose of the marketers is to ensure that the potential consumers view the advertisement online, by constantly going through the advertisement, the users may develop interest in trying out the product. Social shopping has gained more popularity recently, which has allowed consumers – mainly women – to easily buy their favorite brands. This had led to better engagement with the customers in the purchase process (Kerpen, 2011).There are many consumers that have shifted to online shopping, initially this was not so successful, as usually consumers wants to view the product before buying but now it can be observed, that products are bought in an online mode. Ratings and reviews have grown in importance, as they directly inform the consumers about the purchase decisions. Generally, buyers review the products they like and encourage the feedback from the public (Patel & Sharma, 2009). If the product is a high sale item then there are definitely reviews posted on the online blogs and other websites. The potential consumers usually go through the reviews and then decide to buy the product based on the other people's satisfaction level of the product. Mobile devices have been useful in showing off your purchases, getting feedback of your desired items and finding good deals. On mobile, the complete list of product purchases and its details are sent along with the transaction details which allows the user to conveniently view everything on their mobile phones. Mobile devices are proving to be an essential part of the social commerce and can be expected to have even a more integral part for such experiences (Marsden, 2010). Currently many major brands are trying out different aspects of social commerce. The popularity and success attained by social commerce is known to all businesses and hence businesses accordingly work towards using social commerce successfully. According to a prediction by next year’s end those businesses which used social commerce for increasing their customers and their retention will have built a strong competitive advantage in social commerce (Hjarvard, 2008). This reflects upon the importance of social commerce usage and the advantages in can allow businesses to gain. For many organizations, social commerce portrays a new medium, with much to acquire knowledge about. A medium in which new opportunities can be explored and a wider target market can be catered in a cost effective and convenient manner. Every organization should keep in mind: Jump in quick and learn by practicality. It is very important to abide by the latest business practices and ensure that the businesses adopt the changes quickly so that benefits can be attained and consequences can be avoided. It is often a better notion to examine a new chance deeply, but given the fast speed at which social commerce is developing, firms must be keen to gain knowledge while working (Safko, 2012). New opportunities should be availed quickly, the firm should possess a dynamic and flexible nature to act immediately on the given opportunity. They should position some focused bets specially in the specific consideration areas, and promote faithfulness and service. The ones that can should begin with a concrete store in a social networking service where they are doing business. This will allow them to gain experience and knowledge and also allow them to assess whether they can continue in this medium successfully or not. The firms that cannot go that far should finance a novelty group targeting on the social media platforms. Many firms don’t have the technology they require to plan, experiment, and run social commerce ventures and they require to add new qualifications. The firms that do not possess this technology should work towards attaining it so that they can also operate on the social media platforms. Developing of strategies for getting the required data: What aspect of social media would a company want to know about? What would lead a customer towards buying the product? It is advisable for the companies to narrow down their required information and then go for the segmentation. Because then they can get to pinpoint the vendors that deliver the required value. The key to the whole thing is the development of such a platform that is easy to use and is flexible for collecting and then using that data. Anyhow, the sources and the types of data that companies require change from time to time (Axelrod, 2007). Clearly define what type of customer experience is to be delivered: Using different tests, socioeconomic data and pilot projects can be very helpful in devising the social commerce strategies in order to get to know how the customers respond to the product and what do they prefer most. Primary customer research forms such as surveys can be very useful in identifying how a company views its customer needs and conduct the analysis of its competitors. Through the surveys, the organization can retrieve valuable feedback from the consumers which will allow them to make improvements accordingly in the firm. Making social commerce a part of the multi-channel strategy: As social commerce has proven to be such a vital component of the overall sales mix, it is critical to know its position in the multi-channel strategy of the company. Importance is laid on determining how social commerce will have an impact on the other channels (Clapperton, 2012). Customer experience varies on social commerce. While a few vendors have stopped their stores on Facebook, others like ASOS and 1800flowers.com have prospered. The primary factor that differentiates is user experience. The good ones use the factors of the social platform versus copying the qualities of their web stores. A vendor investing in a social business existence should begin with a clean background, creating a new experience. Set focused objectives for social marketing versus social business: The motives of social marketing could be the costs of customer acquisition, the likes received on a page, awareness of a social agenda based on the number of page views etc. These elements depict the level of popularity and appreciation of the firm by the customers and hence allows organization to work on future products and services accordingly. Social commerce objectives on the other hand involve profitable goals for products in different departments on various social networks. In majority of the cases, social marketing will assist in acquiring the social commerce objectives. But there could be places where the social marketing objectives are acquired and the social commerce objectives are not, representing an awareness in the social commerce approach to achieve the actual objectives. Social markets are a good beginning position: If you are just initiating social commerce and are new with it, coming up with a website on a marketplace is an appropriate opportunity. This is suitable in terms of financial concern as well as working on developing a good customer base for the firm. Payvment and Moonfruit propose Facebook-enable marketplaces. Each one of these proposes a small initiating cost. More than 150,000 vendors have signed up — asserting to include approximately 1,000 vendors each week. Expand your current store: If social market is not the right channel for your company, you can come up with your personal social commerce (Jansen & Cecez-Kecmanoic, 2005). It is not necessary to construct a detached individual social business store, because various current alternatives can facilitate. StoreYa.com and Beetailer.com are examples of stores that permit incorporation with primary ecommerce policies like Magento, Shopify and PrestaShop. These alternatives also help automatic synchronization between the online store and social commerce store and eradicate double updating (Maalik, 2011). Gauge achievement of your social commerce existence: Social media creates immense quantity of information because of the communication between the various users. With one social media user, the chances of reaching a good number of users is very high as each user has many other contacts on their list for interaction and social networking. It is crucial to examine this data, in close proximity to valid time, to measure the user emotion associated with your organization. Big vendors have service teams that hands-on supervise the social networks for customer problems and queries. Large organizations also utilize analytical means like Radian6 and Moontoast.com to gauge sentiments of the user, amid various other metrics. In my opinion, service should be given priority. If you help your customers with their problems and meet their needs, it will lead to advocacy and loyalty and eventually sales will follow. Many consumers give high priority to the element of service. Consumers may tend to compare one organization with another on the basis of receiving the service quality from the organization. Therefore organization that use the social commerce platform should ensure that they are responsive to the queries of the customers and follow up with them regarding their queries and complaints. Conclusion Since social networking has set in intensively in the framework of routine life for several users worldwide, organizations are eager to look for different ways to manipulate this online network for profits. Public network websites guarantee to be the upcoming generation of electronic commerce and are swiftly moving towards that path. Marketers are clever enough to feel and judge the importance of comprehending and testing with direct business inside this policy; quick adopters will have a firm base on which to construct their social commerce qualifications as the process develops. Learning what doesn’t function will be as crucial as learning what does function. Every footstep along the route to buy—creating awareness, attracting customers to purchase and developing their faithfulness—portrays its own prospects. All these steps allow the organization to gain more experience and knowledge along the way and hence accordingly these experiences shape up the future decisions for the firm. Firms should be bearing in mind-targeted attempts all along this way, while amalgamating social commerce as a component of a multi-routed policy. Creating a complete policy for accumulating data of the customers and analyzing it for insights, picturing unique techniques for customers to choose and jointly make the purchase, and constructing a persuasive customer experience will be crucial to thrive in this new period of socially driven business. The social media impact can bring about drastic changes for the firm and hence it is important for organization to implement the ways of social commerce in their business practices. References Afrasiabi, R. A., & Benyoucef, M. (2010). A Model for Understanding Social Commerce. Information Systems Journal, 11. Axelrod, R. (2007). The Evoultion of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books. Baekdal, T. (2011). Social Commerce ...It is a completely new playing field! Kansas: Baekdal Plus. Beisel, D. (2006). The Emerging Field of Social Commerce and Social Shopping. GenuineVC, 20-21. Brito, M. (2011). The Evolution of Social Business. Social Media B2B, 5. Clapperton, G. (2012). 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