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

A transformation of marketing is underway as we spend more time on our mobiles, tablets and laptops. The challenge for brands is to connect with customers through all these devices in real time and create campaigns that work across social media, display advertising and e-commerce. Argos, known as the biggest high street retailer online with over 738 million website visits annually found that over 30% of UK´s population owned a tablet. With this perspective in mind they saw a new market opener and embarked upon the ambitious project of opening 53 new digital stores across the UK.

With over 40 years of history, Argos felt that it would be a challenge for this change and they soon started getting interested in knowing if customers would embrace the change or oppose. Argos wanted to be close to their customers however with an estimated of 123 million customer a year, managing, dissecting and digesting the volume of response would be a challenge. To approach this problem, Argos used one of the world’s leading social media listening and analytics technology platforms called Brandwatch. It gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them. This allowed the business to track the reaction to their 53 new digital stores and keep on track of the consumer’s thoughts about this new approach.

Using a social media listening platform can bring many benefits to a business for instance:

• Obtain sales leads. When a potential customer asks about a product or mentions they are considering buying a new product, your team can respond with information.
• Respond to customer complaints. Social media monitoring enables brands to find negative customer comments in social networks that call for responses.
• Find user-generated content. Consumers frequently post photos of products online. Social listening enables you to share that content and engage with consumers.
• Predict market trends. Social listening can help predict larger consumer buying patterns.
• Obtain competitive intelligence. Occasionally checking a competitor’s website does not provide adequate information about how their marketing claims resonate with consumers. Tracking competitors on social media allows you to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Knowing their weaknesses allows you to target new customers.
• Improve products. Companies can determine their product’s shortcomings and strengths by listening to social media conversations related to their products. Insights gained can help guide future product enhancements and develop new products.
• Bottom Line: Social media listening provides organizations both marketing and PR benefits. Companies can find new customers, improve products, research their markets, and improve their PR campaigns.

There are many benefits for using businesses such as Brandwatch. With this in-store innovation Argos managed to understand the consumers sentiment towards their new digital stores and which stores were perceived more favorably and in which areas. Using the feedback of consumers, Argos can now find resolutions to increase customer satisfaction in the present and future. With this business strategy Argos managed to be updated with the present world of digital marketing and they manage to exploit social analytics to help improve the way they work day by day and be at the top of their niche market becoming the leader in digital retailing.

Based on Argos Case Study – in-store innovation

Welcome to your brand new blog at University of Brighton Blog Network.

To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

For assistance, visit our comprehensive support site and check out our Edublogs User Guide guide.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.