With the holiday season quickly approaching, the world’s social media heavyweights have unveiled plans that would allow users to go shopping on their sites, opening up a lucrative and largely-untapped form of e-commerce.
While most Facebook and Twitter users regularly click on options
such as ‘like’ or ‘share’ from their friends’ accounts, another
option is coming down the social media pipe that will give users
an ability to ‘buy’ products as well.
However, given the recent controversy that Facebook created after
it was revealed to be conducting secret experiments on its users,
some people may be wary of the social media network venturing
into online retail shopping.
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In July, it was reported that Facebook secretly manipulated posts
being seen by nearly 700,000 users in 2012 in order to allow
researchers to examine how emotional states are transmitted over
the platform.
Results of the study, conducted by researchers at Facebook,
Cornell University, and the University of California, were
published in the June edition of the journal 'Proceedings of the
National Academy of Scientists' (PNAS) under the title,
‘Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion
through social networks’.
Although the study did not focus on shopping per se, shopping
itself involves some level of ‘emotional states’, which are
determined from a number of social factors, including peer
pressure and the need to demonstrate social status.
Although past efforts to tap into the ‘social commerce’ pool have
largely flopped, industry insiders are still confident that
social media networks are the perfect venue for online shopping.
"Sharing is a fairly reliable indicator of what people are
going to buy," Andy Stevens, head of strategy and research
for Share This, a company that researches social media trends,
told AFP.
"People are waking up to the possibility that regular
customers are using social networks as part of the
decision-making process."
Greg Sterling, a researcher at Opus Research, said it is a good
strategy for social media networks to embrace e-commerce due to
the large number of users. However, online marketers need to
develop a workable plan.
"Just putting a 'buy' button out there is not going to be
effective," he told AFP.
"The challenge is building enough context around that 'buy'
button."