Page 230 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

214 7 Social Commerce: Foundations, Social Marketing, and Advertising

Example: Maui Jim
Maui Jim (mauijim.com) is a designer of high quality polar- recommendations (e.g., see Apple’s Near Me [getne-
ized sunglasses. The company is using Bazaarvoice Ratings arme.com]; applications that are popular based on
& Reviews to enable customers to rate the company’s sun- a user’s current location), Amazon Recommenda-
glasses and accessories. tions, and Snoox (snoox.com; “your friends’ rec-
The company is relying on word-of-mouth marketing to ommendations on everything”).
advertise its products and help shoppers. Customers are • Referral programs. Affiliate programs (e.g., Amazon
invited to share their opinions on the style, fit, and quality of Associates [affiliate-program.amazon.com], Apple’s
specific sunglass models. The invitations appear when cus- iTunes Affiliate Program [apple.com/itunes/affili-
tomers are conducting a search. Maui Jim sends customers ates] pay people for referring new customers). For
an e-mail asking them to review products and the company more about referral programs, see slideshare.net/
has reviews on its pages in selected social network sites. getAmbassador/building-an-effective-referral-
program.
Social Recommendations and Referrals • Matching algorithms. Consulting companies and
vendors (e.g., Netflix) provide recommendations
Recommendation engines allow shoppers to receive advice based on similarity algorithms (as described in
from other shoppers and to give advice to others. Chapter 3).
Social shopping may combine recommendations in a
social network platform with actual sales. Social recommen-
dations and referrals are closely related to ratings and reviews
and are sometimes integrated with them. Illustrative Example of Recommendation Sites

Example: ThisNext A typical example is provided next.
ThisNext (thisnext.com) is a social commerce site where com-
munity members recommend their favorite products so others Buzzillions
can discover desirable or unique items and decide what to buy. Buzzillions (buzzillions.com) is a user-generated product
ThisNext uses WOM, social experiences, and personalization review site. It gets reviews from its parent company,
to facilitate shopping. To assist with discovery and help finalize PowerReviews (acquired by Bazaarvoice), which provides
shopping decisions, the community includes experts, bloggers, customer review software to e-commerce sites. It also incor-
style mavens, and trendsetters. ThisNext has also developed a porates product reviews from companies that use other third-
set of shopping tools for bloggers, designers, and shoppers. For party providers, or have an in-house review system. The site
further description, see thisnext.com/company. provides several useful tools for tagging and researching the
reviews. It also provides ranking. By 2016, it had over 17
It makes sense to combine recommendations with market-
million product reviews.
ing communications and shopping. Sites in this category allow
shoppers to receive and provide advice to specific friends, in Buzzillions’ business model is based on selling traffic, or
product leads, from Buzzillions right back to the merchant
contrast with traditional online product reviews that include
advice provided by unknown shoppers. Furthermore, these network that uses PowerReviews. In other words, Buzzillions’
readers read reviews imported from many other sites, and
sites sell ad space, provide coupons, and some offer automatic
cash-back rewards for shopping with local merchants. they can then click on products of interest, giving them the
opportunity to read more about these products and possibly
Sometimes, social recommendations are embedded in
social shopping portals that offer shopping tools as well as purchase them at the seller’s site.
The company is unique because:
bundling recommendations with ratings and reviews.
Common recommendation methods are:
1. The rankings are based on feedback from customers. The
company provides the tools to narrow down the search,
• Social bookmarking. Recommended products, but the consumers have to read the reviews to see if the
services, etc. are bookmarked so members of social product is right for them.
networks can easily find them. 2. Positive or negative, all reviews are encouraged on
• Personal social recommendations. These are Buzzillions. Unless a review is profane or violates the com-
based on finding people with similar profiles. By pany’s terms, it will be shown on the site.
using these customers’ actual purchases, conclu- 3. Buzzillions does not sell products, although the company
sions can be reached about general and targeted has retail partners listed on the site for direct contact by
consumers.