social shopping – While the internet was originally intented as military or research network it quickly became suitable for other purposes as well. In recent years e-commerce became mainstream. More and more stores make more revenue online than with their high street shops. With the rise of social network shopping online just got a little bit better. This new flavour we call social shopping. .
Social shopping may involve shopping communities, crowd shopping or shopping marketplaces. In a shopping marketplace, buyers join with each other, as well as retailers, to discuss deals and products. This is a good way of recommending new products and getting to know of their features directly from the merchants. In shopping communities, individual people can meet on a forum and spent time together, sharing different discounts and recommendations of products they have bought, or plan to buy. These kinds of communities make social shopping easier, since it creates assurance for buyers about which products or deals are worth trying, and which are not. In a group shopping, sites offer better rates to people who buy in bulk. Here, shoppers can take groups of people in their social network along on a shopping spree to benefit from discounts.
Social shopping is ready for the prime time. Social shopping is how we buy in the age of the internet and, thus, more shoppers are turning towards social commerce to fulfill their shopping needs. User find the latest reviews, promotions or get to know the latest fashion trends. You surely know the challenge of finding the right gift for a person or family member’s birthday. A special sort of social shopping internet sites aim to help you in the process. Here people connect through a web portal and share gift ideas. Users fund the gift with a certain amount. Users discuss the different options and make a choice which gift will be purchased via the web site. All members are are notified via Facebook or Twitter which gift was been purchased..
There literally hundreds of services yet only a few managed to acquire a resonable user base. Three services dominate the market Storenvy, Shelf9 and Kaboodle.
Shelf9 is an online shopping community with around 10,000,000 items available online. Shoppers can use their social network accounts, find followers in the community and see their likes/dislikes, including their comments for products. Kaboodle is a social shopping website where users can interact with other shoppers and join groups share information on certain products and recommend good bargains to other users. Social shopping site Storeenvy is a site where buyers can interact with each other and with retailers, known as the Dawanda model. Creating a store page is free. Stores are then structured into an online mall. People have the option to can bookmark items to buy later, be updated with the latest infomation of stores or share products and deals on Facebook and Twitter.
The list of social shopping services is certainly not complete, many others may be as good. These are exciting times for shoppers and retailers.
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