The opportunities
A recent iCrossing study titled "How America Searches: Online Retail," found that 42 percent of consumers who view information about brands and products on sites like Wikipedia said the information was extremely or very influential to their online purchase decisions. Blog posts, online videos and brand profiles on social networking sites hold significant weight with 18- to 44-year-old shoppers. Use of customer product reviews and evaluations to research online purchases jumped from 40 percent in 2005 to 49 percent in 2007. Seventy percent of all online shoppers said online reviews were extremely or very important factors in their decision-making process.
For advertisers, social shopping is still increasing in popularity; therefore, from a pure media buy perspective many of the sites do not accept all forms of advertising. Those that accept advertising have signed on with rep firms or networks instead of selling the inventory directly. ThisNext, despite ranking number two in terms of traffic, does not accept advertising at this time. Wists is a social shopping site that only accepts Google PPC advertising.
Some social shopping sites offer the unique opportunity for brands to connect with their audiences by integrating with and/or creating shopping communities often with direct communication capabilities within the network. StyleHive is the forerunner in partnering with brands to create brand community pages aka "Nectar Hives." The Nectar Hive is a landing page that contains all of the bookmarks that StyleHive members have created around the brand that also includes chat features. The brand has complete control over content through access to StyleHive's Partner Sites interface, and can delete comments at its discretion (although according to the StyleHive rep, there has never been a negative comment on a Nectar Hive).
The challenges
Hurdles that could impede the growth of social shopping include:
- Users may not be motivated enough to bother posting their favorite products.
- They may not want to go through the trouble of downloading software in order to grab images of products they like to add to their widgets. Some sites utilize buttons to grab the images. Other sites require the user to cut and paste the html into their webpage. This could be challenging for users who are not computer savvy. Additionally, every site calls the image that is grabbed and put into the display format something different -- from tags, to badges to shopcasts. This leads to confusion among users.
- Users may post images of out-of-stock products, so extra vigilance is required by merchandisers.
- Privacy issues on social network sites.
The future
Opinions vary on social shopping's staying power. Merchandisers who are selling their products via user-hype on social shopping sites obviously think social shopping is here to stay. Media analysts, such as Forrester Research, think the low traffic numbers will impede its growth and market value. Shopping engines, such as Shopping.com, see social shopping as being more like venture investments than line extensions.
While the jury is still out, by its nature social shopping is more likely to impact brand awareness, purchase consideration and maybe even intent, but not necessarily direct sales, at least as measured by the last touchpoint. The shopping engines such as Yahoo Shopping and Google Product Search that are very direct sales-focused will likely integrate social shopping with their current offerings; with others potentially to follow if they believe it will further drive sales for their customers and/or revenue for them.
Undoubtedly, social shopping will continue to weave its way in and around ecommerce and other points of online networking and shopping services. It is part of the fabric of our culture and it is not surprising that the social aspect of shopping is now expanding and finding its voice online -- and it is a consumer voice. Just as in other areas of digital marketing, the consumer voice is becoming louder, more clear and ubiquitous. Older advertising and marketing models, even those that have been applied online, may not work. There are new ways for consumers to connect and communicate, and therefore, new ways for marketers to connect to them. We simply (or not-so-simply) have to connect the dots.
Denise Zimmerman is president and chief strategy officer of NetPlus Marketing, a top 50 Interactive Agency based outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Read full bio.