The role of social media in online retailing will become increasingly important

Abstract: Although the price of online shopping, quality and retail sales gradually converge, but e-commerce today still can not provide physical store customer satisfaction. For example, customers can not determine whether a dress fits, and can not listen to the style of friends evaluation, which makes

Although the price of online shopping, quality and retail sales gradually converge, but e-commerce today still can not provide physical stores in the "Customer satisfaction." For example, customers can not determine whether a dress fits, and can not listen to the style of friends evaluation, which makes many users hesitate before the final purchase, and is likely to cancel the virtual "shopping cart."

Using social media and emerging technologies may overcome some of the barriers to online shopping. Recently online 3D e-commerce website "Happy Amoy Happy", is trying to use the simulation of the online shopping experience to improve the problem. It is reported that happy Amoy happy to integrate the network shopping into the 3D virtual community, here, each store's furnishings are referenced by the entity shop design, including shop window, shelf display, display of goods, etc., the store also set up a virtual shopping guide. More crucially, the site will play, chat function integration, users can go shopping online, open the dialogue program, you can let friends join the online decision-making process.

This combination of e-commerce and social media can be seen as a typical "community business". According to Wikipedia's explanation, community-oriented business refers to the use of social media to increase the network sales process of interpersonal communication, interaction and user participation. In fact, the SNS trend of the electric business enterprise is not difficult to understand: with the Word-of-mouth marketing produced by the interpersonal communication, the Community business can solve the core problem of the electric business enterprise to some extent: the new customer obtains the cost extremely high, the loyalty and the conversion rate is low.

All along, traditional electric business enterprises often rely on search engines and online advertising to obtain customers: the purchase of traffic and low-cost strategy, has always been the most basic way of life. Even Amazon and ebay still need to invest heavily in advertising and promotions. Many domestic companies are lack of their own user platform, in the network marketing can only buy local user information, and through the database marketing way to enhance the order quantity.

"Advertising-traffic-sales transformation" model has been going on for many years, until the emergence of SNS so that the company realized that, since the flow and attention, why continue to throw money to do traffic handling work? You know, the Internet has the best content providers-users, as long as users to form Word-of-mouth communication, the company will be able to reduce the dependence on other media, save the cost of promotion.

Research has found that social media, compared with advertising, can lead to higher-quality traffic and more explosive power. From recent changes abroad, Facebook is constantly developing functional services for retail sites, such as Facebook Deals, so that people can share their preferences and latest purchases and get advice from friends.

At the same time, many Web sites and traditional retailers have launched a Facebook-based online shop system, one that directs friends to the site itself, and the other is to create a separate shop where the entire shopping process takes place on Facebook. It is worth mentioning that, according to Hitwise data, at the end of last year, Facebook's traffic was once more than Google, indicating that the Internet portal based on interpersonal communication, is exceeding the search engine, become the Internet's primary entrance.

Further, the current E-commerce is only the greatest extent to achieve the convergence of commodities, but in the database analysis and consumer interaction is still vague. Consumers can interact with the site, but consumers are unable to interact, which limits the role of interpersonal communication, can not fully enlarge the marketing effect. In fact, if the model of Community business is properly operated, it can promote users ' sharing, dissemination and evaluation, and form a consumer community of scale. One obvious example is that there have been two very hot activities in watercress: one is "exchange of small things to start with recently", and the second is "I will know the value of things after I buy". Many users want to buy or have bought a product after the photos found that they want to buy but do not know where to buy something unexpectedly someone gave the purchase link, and those cheap goods even cause consumers spontaneously into groups, and some Taobao sellers inexplicably because of large-scale group buying fire.

But it has to be said that despite the "money" of social media and E-commerce, it is not easy to really achieve this innovation. After all, SNS's original motivation is "to establish close contact with others, to understand the dynamics of contact," and to share the joys of life with friends is the intention of users to use social media. How will gather the popularity stability and realizes the transformation, causes it to become the electronic commerce business relation goal, the electric business enterprise still only is in the groping stage, has not the slightest experience. And this transformation, whether it will destroy the original network friendship?

On this basis, the sales generated by the exchange between users, compared with the sales of traffic brought by the advertisement, is not worth mentioning at the moment. In other words, the "advertising-traffic-sales transformation" model will not waver for some time to come. A few weeks ago, the online social marketing platform, "every guest's talent" is a good example. Compared to last year in the media hot "where the object", where the customer is slow to detonate the topic, this to a certain extent, compared to advertising, the current use of SNS holding red a user's speed is obviously still too slow.

But there is no denying that, in the next few years, the role of social media in the online retail will become more and more important, after all, traffic can be bought by smashing ads, but Word-of-mouth marketing generated brand loyalty but can not buy. Whether or not online stores are closer to consumers depends on the time, technology, and money that managers are willing to devote to increasing personalized services. If you haven't entered the field yet, you're doomed to lag behind.