Based on Huang, Z., & Benyoucef, M. (2012). From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), 246–259.

As e-commerce is undergoing an evolution through the adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities, it is important that businesses keeps their reputation and grow their competences to enhance customer participation and achieve greater economic value. This new phenomenon is commonly referred to as social commerce, however it has not yet been fully understood. This blog post will focus around the concept social commerce and will be based around the Social Commerce Design Model published by Huang and Benyoucef (2012). Within this environment, customers have access to social knowledge and experiences to support them in better understanding their online purchase purposes, and in making more informed and accurate purchase decisions (Dennison et al. 2009). Meanwhile, online businesses are able to capture customers’ behaviours, which gives them insights into their shopping experiences and expectations, and helps them develop successful business strategies (Constantinides and Fountain 2008).

Web 2.0 is the current state of online technology as it compares to the early days of the Web, characterized by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels. (Rouse, 2017) Social commerce can be defined as word-of-mouth applied to e-commerce (Dennison et al. 2009). It is a combination of e-commerce and Web 2.0 (Constantinides et al. 2008). A report by Lewis et al. (2008) indicates that the growing popularity of social commerce is reaching 43% per year. Nearly 88% of business expect to expand their investment on social commerce in the future (Constantinides et al. 2008) It is basically applying a social media applications to shape the business, hence transforming market for goods and services into a socially centred and user driven marketplace. (Wigand et al 2008) With Web 2.0 the business can strengthen business relationships with customers, increase traffic to the company’s website, identify new business opportunities and support product and brand development. (Michaelidou et al. 2011)

In order to implement a business to the social commerce model published Huang and Benyoucef (2012) the model design consists on four layers: Individual, Conversation, Community and Commerce. The order of the layers is as shown in figure below. The most inner layer, the “individual stage” represents ‘‘the self.’’ As Fisher (2010) argues, users interact within online communities because ‘‘they learn more about themselves and enjoy feeling known by their community.’’ This layer is where all the information starts; including user profiles as well as all the user generated content (posting, commenting, liking, sharing, etc.). It provides a sense of self identification and awareness that can be recognized by others. Building a personal profile is helpful for identifying a participant and motivating social activity

Social Commerce Design Model by Huang and Benyoucef (2012)

The second layer of social commerce design is the Conversation stage, which requires offering a variety of interaction features among participants in order to establish a community. The Conversation design principle provides participants with collaborative and bidirectional communications, not only offering rich social content, but also motivating participants to generate social content. In this context, Conversation design should focus on various approaches that enable participants to listen as well as speak (Fisher 2010).

The third layer of social commerce design is Community building. Communities are groups of people who can support each other’s decision making. To build a community, there are a number of design features that need to be addressed, including offering appropriate community support, connecting people and friends, and updating social activities to maintain relationships. For instance, a forum page could be implemented in a ecommerce business, where communities are easily created based on special interest groups and users should be able to freely share their experience and knowledge within the community. (Constantinides et al. 2008) Similarly, Murugesan (2007) addresses the establishment of social networks of people with common interests.

The last stage, the “commerce” layer of social commerce design, supposed to harness community effects to engage participants with services and applications provided by online businesses. It covers a wide range of design features, such as shopping with like-minded people, offering social proof, following the crowd and authority, reciprocating favours, providing social ads and application, and facilitating business functions.

If a business has an e-commerce operation in place, they already fulfill the features in the Individual and Commerce layers of this proposed model. They need to implement the features in the Community and Conversation layers. If they have a serious presence on social networks, then they already fulfill the Individual, Conversation and Community layers. All they need is to further implement the Commerce layer. Social commerce is increasingly drawing the attention of practitioners and academics. Evidence from previous studies indicates that social commerce is a new phenomenon that needs to be better understood. This post has provided an explanation of the social commerce concept using a specific model, presenting its state-of the-art, and describing the relevant features in social commerce design.

References

Constantinides, E., and Fountain, S. J. Web 2.0: conceptual foundations and

marketing issues. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 9, 3,

2008, 231–244.

Constantinides, E., Romero, L. R., and Boria, M. A. G. Social media: a new frontier for    retailers? European Retail Research, 22, 2008, 1–28.

Dennison, G., Bourdage-Braun, S. and Chetuparambil, M. Social commerce defined. White       paper    #23747, IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, November 2009.

Fisher, E. Social design. Facebook Developers, 2010. Available at

developers.facebook.com/socialdesign

Huang, Z., & Benyoucef, M. (2012). From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), 246–259.

Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N. T., and Christodoulides, G. Usage, barriers and measurement   of social media marketing: an exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B               brands. Industrial Marketing Management, 40, 7, 2011, 1153–1159.

Murugesan, S. (2007). Understanding Web 2.0. IT Professional, 9(4), 34-41.

Rouse (2017) Web 2.o Definition ONLINE TechTarget Available at:            http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Web-20-or-Web-2 Accessed on the 6th of      May