What is Social Commerce?

Is it just another nonsense term thrown around in the world or digital marketing?

Can it be implemented Successfully?

There are multiple different types of social commerce however within this blog the focus will be on Social Network Driven Sales, to see what the 6 other methods of social commerce click this link: http://mashable.com/2013/05/10/social-commerce-definition/#P8doVWcwPOqA

Social commerce is defined by the business dictionary (2016) as “A form of electronic commerce which uses social networks to assist in the buying of selling of products.” Therefore when a purchase is made with the assistance of social commerce some kind of social network would have been involved at one stage by the customer in the run up towards the purchase

Let’s look at a campaign that was successful using social commerce on social media 

Coca Cola’s “Share a Coke” Campaign was one of the most popular and successful social commerce campaigns in recent times.

Coca Cola produced a large scale marketing campaign which printed names on to on Coca Cola Bottles these bottles were then disturbed to shops and multiple customers would head into the shops looking to purchase their own “personalised” coca cola bottle.

A element of this campaign involved social commerce users were encourage to #ShareACoke (an image of their personalised bottle) on social media this then lead to multiple different people posting images of coca cola bottles across different social media platforms.

Ciara was so excited to get her hands on her own personal coke she shared it on Twitter!

Users can also create their own virtual coke bottle shown below on www.shareacoke.com, after the creation of the bottle the user will be encourage to share this on social media encouraging others to create their own personal coke bottle.

Customers can design their own personal coca cola online.

Some customers were even paying higher then retail price to own a personalised coca cola bottle!!!

This campaign was a huge success for coca cola as a large number of people were using #ShareACoke to share their images all around social media tempting their friends and peers to find their personal Coca Cola and share this on social media.

SUCCESS – Coca Cola Sold 3 times the amount of bottles of coke compared to their nearest rival Pepsi during the promotional period. ( Dholakiya, 2016) 

Read more about this social commerce campaign and discover more successful campaigns here: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/09/15/4-brands-cracked-social-commerce-code/

A Model For Social Commerce:

Huang, Z., & Benyoucef, M. (2012) produced a model in for social commerce this model was implemented successfully by Coca Cola and can be used in order to set up a social commerce campaign.

The model has four elements  Individual – Conversation – Community – Commerce

Individual – this is the stage when an individual person gets involved in the campaign for example within the Coca Cola  #ShareACoke campaign this would be when the photo of the personal bottle is first posted on social media.

Conversation – this is the point when a conversation would begin within social media, other users will start engaging in the original posts and asking questions. Within the #ShareACoke campaign this could be where a user asks another user a question like “How do you get your name on that coke bottle?”

Community – this is when the conversation extends further out in the community whereas before it may only be friends who saw the post now people further in the community will take notice. In the #ShareACoke this could be the stage when users start making their on custom bottles on www.shareacoke.com and sharing them further into the community.

Commerce – this is the stage when a purchase is finally made, customer could make the purchase as part of a group or make additional purchase at this stage to share the product with friends. For #ShareACoke this is when the personalised bottles are purchased whether this is through going into a shop or customers ordering their personal coke offline.

References: 

Anon. (2016). social commerce. Available: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/social-commerce.html. Last accessed 23rd Feb 2016.

Dholakiya, P. (2016). 4 Brands That Have Cracked the Social Commerce Code. Available: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/09/15/4-brands-cracked-social-commerce-code/. Last accessed 21st April 2016.

Huang, Z. & Benyoucef, M. (2012) From e-commerce to social commerce: a close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

Indvik, L. (2013). The 7 Species of Social Commerce. Available: http://mashable.com/2013/05/10/social-commerce-definition/#P8doVWcwPOqA. Last accessed 21st April 2016.