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Social Commerce Is Redefining Customer Relations
By Joe Purcell
Expert Author
Article Date: 2011-06-27
Social commerce is booming. Just in the past year there has been an investment frenzy of over $15 billion in social commerce on the internet. Venture capitalists are seeing huge opportunities here. As this new market evolves, customer relations will also follow a more socially oriented path.
A lengthy article on Wired discusses just how this new marketplace is developing. The premise is that social media can drive what people buy because of the appeal of peer pressure, or peer recommendations, if you will. They report that sharing something on Facebook brings 11 new visits to a site and $2.52 in sales! This alone reveals how big of a prospect social commerce is.
Companies like Copious have taken this route with the hope to be able to stand out among all the multitude of e-commerce websites. It is a social marketplace where people can buy and sell to people they are connected with through Facebook. Instead of competing against companies like Ebay and Amazon on their own e-commerce turf, they have created their own in the world of social media charging a commission fee for sellers.
Other companies are catching on, like Tack This. There are even social commerce news sites! Experts are explaining why exactly this works, such as Paul Adams, a Facebook product manager and former Google engineer, who has posted his presentation on slideshare. Researching the the near-term evolution of social commerce or the best practices for working in this new market is essential for customer relations managers.
About the Author:
Joe Purcell is a technology virtuoso, cyberspace frontiersman, and connoisseur of Linux, Mac, and Windows alike.
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