The role of social shopping guide in e-commerce

Nowadays, the electric business market develops vigorously, the competition is intense, therefore, more and more practitioners, began to talk about the shopping guide question. In marketing, the shopping guide seems to be in the "Consumer purchase decision-making process" of the two intermediate links, that is, "information" link and "Comparative selection" link. But in fact, a good shopping guide, but also can affect the front of the "demand Generation" link, and the back of the "Purchase decision" link. In fact, I have a personal opinion, "consumer purchase decision process", should not be again as the traditional marketing to describe it as a linear process, but should see it as a whole process, its various links, may be concurrent, and even some links may be reversed. But the most important role of the shopping guide, personally, is still reflected in the "information" this link. This link, the use of Internet terminology, belongs to information filtering. Here we will discuss the role of shopping guide in E-commerce.

Early: Electric business internal shopping guide

Electronic Business site in the internal shopping guide, to help users to filter information, the main means of keyword search, category navigation, channel (clustering), advertising, etc., this is the platform level shopping guide. The advantage of the platform guide is that the user can set the way to effectively find their favorite products, its process is the most familiar consumers, and consumers of this way of use, has formed a inertia. Its disadvantage is that it needs to be manipulated by the consumer, process is very cumbersome, it's information filtering, it is still inaccurate, but also need to spend a lot of time for further hand and eye selection, especially, this shopping guide mode is still relatively material level, the lack of emotional layer in the face of consumer touch.

Mid-term: shopping guide to the outside professional expansion

Shopping guide gradually to the station outside the expansion, performance for the Professional Shopping guide website or forum shopping Guide section (Taobao guests, etc.), this is the seller level shopping guide. Shopping Guide website, often substitutes for the consumer to carry on the preliminary screening to the commodity, and mostly provides the recommendation shop or the consumer website related information, such as the prestige condition, the sale quantity, the customer appraisal, the price information and so on, this certainly has alleviated the consumer from the operation encounters many troubles. But at this time, because the shopping guide website and shop or the website of the profit is related, so, the trust degree of the shopping guide, still have certain problem. Shopping guide's emotion moved, here also basically did not realize.

Post-social shopping guide

Social media is getting involved. Social media on the shopping guide, in the beginning, is not a special shopping guide, it is only objectively, played a guide role.

Social network, can play a way of shopping guide, the main performance in the following three aspects:

① is a shopping experience sharing between ordinary consumers, which is mainly manifested in the community comments after shopping, consultation and questions and answers between users, Pictures Street racket, network sun, etc.

② is a personality display, the general community, will spontaneously form a number of opinion leaders, they in the community for shopping behavior or speech, the average consumer also has a strong influence;

③ is a professional knowledge of the dissemination of professional people or authority, generally have a great influence, they intervene in the community's perspective, is actually the dissemination of information, that is, they introduced the choice of goods knowledge, use of knowledge and maintenance of knowledge, access to a large number of consumers sought after.

On the surface, social media is the consumer's speech to the SAR, consumers themselves do not deliberately to do shopping guide. But in fact, as we all know, the community has unlimited potential for the shopping guide, typical such as beautiful, Mushroom street, such as female shopping community, the flow of Taobao shops, it is no seller can not ignore the. Because of this, the communities themselves, sellers of various electrical dealers, and a large number of third-party service providers have already conducted or openly and secretly carried out shopping activities in the community.

The resulting problems are much more real. The biggest problem of the excessive participation of platform, Merchant and third party service provider is the decline of trust degree. This problem is caused by the conflict between the nature of the community itself and the nature of the business itself. Community is a social place, people share information, not based on interest factors, and because of this, its users trust between the high. and business for the benefit, when they or dark intervene, they release the information, it is also necessarily one-sided good information, but no longer is the consumer's own that based on the real experience, or good or bad evaluation, therefore, the decline in trust is inevitable.

Currently, some of the vertical shopping communities overseas have begun to try some new methods, they no longer simply use the so-called social community functions, but further, into some of the social deep application, such as the theme of shopping, emotional shopping, and other forms to rebuild consumer trust, and to try at the spiritual level, rather than the physical level, To impress consumers. These methods, the main performance in the shopping guide of the situational and emotional, that is, in the site to set more humane shopping Guide interface, the use of implanted products, weakening the description of the product itself, they often use some realistic themes, and through the moment of life, or a way to create a lifestyle to render products, The product becomes a kind of taste or style that conforms to this life situation and lifestyle, and thus arouses the consumer's purchase desire. Here, the purchase is because, the shopping guide has stimulated the consumer some kind of realistic emotion, like the identity, the sense of belonging and so on. This more user-friendly shopping site, it is worth looking forward to.

In short, no matter what level of shopping guide performance, for consumers, it has achieved information filtering. That is, the face of the network of massive products, the choice of costs (mainly psychological and time costs) in the increasing, shopping guide can undoubtedly make the choice of cost reduction and focus on demand, so consumers need to guide, but consumers are more expected to see excellent, trustworthy Shopping guide site.