In Arab countries, when a woman goes shopping, she does not only take a payment card and a smartphone with her to compare prices online at most - she takes a pack of female friends with her. After all, he is not guided by any opinions found on the net, no advice from consultants there - the opinion of a chain of trusted people matters most. And that is why the Polish Inglot, entering the Saudi Arabian market, had to expand the space in its stores from standard, European to one that would fit not one, but five customers with one cosmetic.
Online stores do not have a limited space (unless they happen to be clogged with servers), but such an Arabic model works great in them. Man by nature lives in a herd. Our more plentifully hairy and slightly hunchier ancestors (well, let's just stick to it — hairy) lived together to survive. Now we live together to live our own way — because on social media everyone is with everyone and yet creates himself. Until he comes to make a decision - for example, to buy. Then he begins to wiggle like an anteater in an anthill, seeking advice, opinions and guidance. And this is the essence of social commerce — shopping in which we use social ties.
For shopping between post and like
And if social ties, then of course social media too. Let's take a look at Facebook, which tries to transfer to its servers everything that surrounds us on a daily basis - friends, places, events - it has also moved our purchases there a long time ago. So it is not surprising that the largest social network in the world, also in the world of social commerce, is the leader. As we learn from the Shopify report, if you are on Facebook, click on the photo that leads to the store and buy a product, then you are one of the statistical 1.85% of people who, when entering the banner of the store, will make purchases in it. Maybe the number doesn't knock you down, but in fact Zuckerberg's website handles two-thirds of such transactions across all social media. It turns out that they also convert videos quite well, because YouTube and Vimeo are in second and third place in this list. However, if we look at the value of orders, then Facebook has to give way to Instagram, Pinterest and the leader in this regard - Polyvore, where customers spend an average of almost $67 at a time. Maybe because the site is focused on a specific industry (fashion) and people look at it who know that the wardrobe is never too full. Even if you close it by pushing it with your knee.
If not social media, then what?
Social commerce is not just about social media. Sometimes the direction is the opposite — not from community to shopping, but from shopping to community. Such, for example, Google Play, in which any Android supporter can download the application of their choice to their phone. This is a place where the opinions of other users are crucial, because based on popularity, their position in the search engine is determined and thus even greater popularity. There's also something that means more than a thousand words from some random users out there — reviews from our friends.
And who likes misplaced gifts? Now every friend; every aunt who has known us forever, of course; every Santa Claus; everyone can be added by us to people with access to our list of welcome gifts that we create thanks to Amazon. Of course, no one will go to another store anymore to look for these gifts. And when the gifts are splashed with foil in our hands, they will be removed from the list so that someone does not accidentally gift us with a second microwave.
Although we usually buy from ourselves or for someone, we rarely make such a decision ourselves - even if we are not surrounded by a crowd of friends in the store, our first impressions are shaped by the opinion of a seller, a friend from Facebook, found on the web, from anywhere. A man is never alone in shopping.
