Well – this one came out of the blue and has given much credibility to the burgeoning Social Shopping industry. The American Marketing Association published a survey of 1098 customers who were asked the question “If the following were available on a social-networking website, which would you likely do this holiday season?”, and they found that:
- 51% would find out about store sales / product discounts
- 51% would download coupons
- 47% would search for gift ideas
- 29% would buy products
- 20% would post or view videos
- 18% would read or write product reviews on a blog
- 12% would do none of the above (pah!)
It appeared on USA Today over the weekend and it was also covered really well in two particular blog posts (amongst another 8 I found):
–Pete Cashmore’s excellent Mashable! blog
–a new one I found at The Mu Life
What it goes to show is that shopping can, and indeed is, a social activity both on and offline, and that it can be one of the most powerful word of mouth marketing activity due to the “trust factor”. For Crowdstorm, this is vital because we want customers to build up unique reputations on the network so people know who they are, why they should trust them, and let them earn respect and trust. Without this, their contributions will hardly impact on the products at all (e.g. just a marketeer coming on the site and not adding any value – like some of our competitors).
As the articles say, a lot of the big social networks would benefit immensely from integrating a social shopping element and they will know that this is not an easy task to do organically. Thinking back to the old price comparison days, ask any of the big players what happened to their own efforts at creating a price comparison engine and then ask why they gave up and partnered with a specialised player…
Pete Cashmore (mashable) also noted at the end of his blog that “there is a strong sense that shopping and social networks should go together, but it’s far from clear how it’ll pan out.” A fair comment but I think it is pretty clear to us where this is all heading and how Crowdstorm plans to lead the charge in this space, and make use of our 16 combined years of ecommerce experience.
One things for sure – this is just the beginning of one of the biggest shake-ups the online shopping space has seen for many years!
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