Page 229 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Case 7.1: EC Application: Polyvore: A Trendsetter in Social Shopping 213

friends. People were getting together on Facebook to buy and participating in social networking forums is another way
each other gifts. (Wrapp enables you to send giftcards to compare prices and read product and service reviews. A
from your smartphone.) variety of SC models and tools is available for this purpose.
• Virtual gifts. There is a rapidly increasing market on We present two major categories here.
social networks for virtual gifts. Facebook sells virtual
gifts in its marketplace. Ratings and Reviews
• Getting help from friends. To get help from friends, you
may go to sites such as shopsocially.com. You can post a Ratings and reviews by friends, even by people that you do
question, share a purchase, and much more. not know (e.g., experts or independent third-party evalua-
• Shopping without leaving Facebook. There are several tors), are usually available for social shoppers. In addition,
ways to use Facebook Fan pages for shopping, so fans do any user has the opportunity to contribute reviews and par-
not have to leave Facebook. Payment is one implementa- ticipate in relevant discussions. Some tools for conducting
tion issue, security is another (see facebook.com/auc- rating and reviews can be found at bazaarvoice.com/solu-
tionitems). tions/conversations. Examples are:
• Social auctions. Facebook now has a Store App for eBay
sellers, called Auction Items (previously “eBay items”),
where members can send private invitations to their • Customer ratings and reviews. Customer ratings
friends to invite them to their store. The Auction Items are popular. They can be found on vendors’ product
app is available in several languages. For more details, see (or service) sites such as Buzzillions, or on indepen-
facebook.com/AuctionItems. Facebook also offers an dent reviews sites (e.g., TripAdvisor), and/or in cus-
app for Etsy stores. tomer news feeds (e.g., Amazon.com, Epinions).
• Crowdsourcing shopping advice. You can get advice Customer ratings can be summarized by votes or
from many people (the crowd), as is done by CloudShopper. polls.
CloudShopper allows users to organize the advice given by • Customer testimonials. Customer experiences are
their friends. Users select products and start a conversation typically published on vendors’ sites, and third-
on Facebook about their items of interest. The company party sites such as tripadvisor.com. Many sites
also provides price comparisons and price alerts about the encourage discussion (e.g., bazaarvoice.com/solu-
selected items; see cloudshopper.com.au for details. tions/conversations).
• Helping sellers and bloggers sell products. Etsy is • Expert ratings and reviews. Ratings or reviews
socially oriented marketplace which helps bloggers and can also be generated by domain experts and appear
sellers (mostly artists) monetize their businesses by mak- in different online publications.
ing it easy for them to sell products directly to consumer. • Sponsored reviews. These are written by paid
• Event shopping. There are many sites that will help you bloggers or domain experts. Advertisers and blog-
shop for a special event (e.g., a wedding) with the assis- gers find each other by searching through websites
tance of your friends. Many variations of this model exist. such as sponsoredreviews.com, which connects
bloggers with marketers and advertisers.
• Conversational marketing. People communicate
Social Shopping Aids: From Recommendations via e-mail, blog, live chat, discussion groups, and
to Reviews, Ratings, and Marketplaces tweets. Monitoring conversations may yield rich
data for market research and customer service (e.g.,
In addition to the typical e-commerce shopping aids such as as practiced by Dell; see their social media com-
comparison engines and recommendations in the Amazon. mand center).
com style (see Chapter 3), there are special aids for social • Video product review. Reviews can be generated
commerce. by using videos. YouTube offers reviews that are
uploaded, viewed, commented on, and shared.
Recommendations in Social Commerce • Bloggers reviews. This is a questionable method
since some bloggers are paid and may use a biased
Online customers use shopping aids (e.g., price comparison approach. However, many bloggers have the reputa-
sites like nextag.com), looking at product review sites such tion to be unbiased.
as epinions.com, and researching other sources. Examining