The rise and rise of Social Commerce

Social Commerce is the new kid on the social media block combining as it does social media and shopping with the accent on return on investment for retailers

Recently, Gap ran a special promotion through FourSquare where anyone who checked-in to any store, for one day, would receive 25% off the total purchase. The offer extended to Twitter and Facebook, but in those cases, users were asked to print a coupon. Gap also ran the promotion through Groupon

Many social consumers reported that the offer drove them into local stores and it indeed caused a social effect as they took to Twitter and Facebook to share the deal with friends and followers.

According to a statement made to the Wall Street Journal by Sabrina Simmons, chief financial officer of Gap Inc., "While results were mixed across our brands in August, we remain focused on our overall goal of driving top line sales growth." Diversity and experimentation is key, especially as commerce is as distributed as attention and community.

Enlightened Engagement
Lora Cecere of the Altimeter Group is the author of a report on social commerce and in it she examines the steps necessary to bring social networks and commerce to life as brands seek answers to important questions, "What is the ROI? And, how do we encourage our fans to buy?"

Cecere sets the stage for the work that lies ahead, "As companies struggle to answer these questions, the effort no longer is social for the sake of being social, but gives rise to horizontal processes that extend beyond marketing to drive social commerce."
If the first phase of the social commerce evolution is participation, Cecere believes that the next phase of social commerce is enlightened engagement.

In this phase, companies focus on learning to listen from multiple listening posts(internal and external), aggregating and syndicating shopper reviews, improving engagement through the use of experts and more effectively connecting like shoppers through video content. Commerce is enabled through fan pages, and the redefinition of engagement. However in the evolution of social processes, companies find that listening and learning is not enough. Fans want companies to respond in a more meaningful way. They want to have input into which products that they buy and the way that they buy these products.