目錄
Social e-commerce is a method of conducting electronic commerce activities through social media platforms, aimed at leveraging the influence of social media to promote product sales. It enables transactions through shopping software and payment features on social media platforms, leveraging user communities on social media to attract potential customers.
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What is social e-commerce?
Social commerce is a method of conducting commercial activities on social media. It typically involves using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., for e-commerce activities, including showcasing products, promoting them, collecting orders, and conducting transactions. Social commerce aims to leverage user communities on social media to facilitate product sales and enables transactions through shopping software and payment features on social media platforms.
What are the differences between social e-commerce and traditional e-commerce?
Social commerce and traditional e-commerce are very similar in many ways, both being methods of conducting e-commerce activities through the internet. However, there are some important distinctions between social commerce and traditional e-commerce.
- Social commerce takes place on social media platforms, while traditional e-commerce occurs on independent websites. This means that social commerce relies more on the functionality of social media platforms and user communities, whereas traditional e-commerce relies more on its own website and brand.
- Social commerce relies more on the influence of social media. On social media platforms, users can spread product information through social network effects, helping to increase product exposure and attract potential customers. Traditional e-commerce, on the other hand, relies more on traditional marketing methods such as advertising and promotional activities to attract customers.
- Social commerce may also rely more on the shopping software and payment features of social media platforms for transactions, while traditional e-commerce relies more on its own shopping carts and payment systems.
| Traditional e-commerce | Social e-commerce | |
| User source | Directly targeting the general public, undistinguished user source | Users of social media platforms |
| Promotion channels | Advertising placement through mobile phones, computers, television, etc. | Sharing and reposting on social platforms, influencer live streaming, image and video content, etc. |
| Means of communication | Aggregator traffic hub, expanding outward from the center | Decentralized model, expanding through peer-to-peer proliferation |
| Marketing center | Centered around products, focusing on product introduction and promotion | User-centered, emphasizing the needs and management of community users |
| User loyalty | No fixed group, lower user loyalty | There is a fixed social group, higher user loyalty |
What are the advantages of social e-commerce?
Social commerce has many advantages, making it a choice for many businesses. Here are some key advantages of social commerce:
- Huge user community: Social media platforms have large user communities, allowing social commerce to attract a vast number of potential customers.
- Facilitates cross-border transactions: Social commerce enables transactions across borders, making it well-suited for a globalized business model.
- Leverages the influence of social media: Social commerce can leverage the influence of social media to attract potential customers, which is an advantage traditional e-commerce lacks.
- Transactions through shopping software and payment features on social media platforms: This makes the transaction process more convenient and expedited.
- .Access to large amounts of user feedback from social media platforms: This helps improve products and services, enhancing customer satisfaction.
While social commerce has many advantages, it also comes with some disadvantages. For example, it may rely more on the functionality and policies of social media platforms compared to traditional e-commerce, and additional fees might be required to use these features. Additionally, social commerce may face information overload issues due to the abundance of merchants and product information on social media platforms, making it challenging for consumers to find valuable information. Moreover, since information on social media platforms is easily replicated and disseminated, this could lead to intellectual property issues. Finally, social commerce may also face threats in terms of cybersecurity because there’s a risk of information theft when conducting transactions online.
Overall, social commerce is an e-commerce method with many advantages, but it also has some drawbacks. Businesses should consider these factors and make wise decisions when choosing whether to use social commerce.
What are the different types of social e-commerce?
Social commerce primarily involves interacting with people, leaving comments, and liking posts to establish rare interactive ties between individuals, thereby expanding user communities at extremely low costs. Social commerce can be categorized into three types based on their forms: distributor model, content sharing model, and group buying model.
Distributor Model
The distributor model combines the S2B2C (Supplier to Business to Consumer) social retailing model. Suppliers integrate elements such as warehousing, logistics, and platforms to provide platform support to members or store owners. Then, through social tools, they promote products to customers to achieve sales objectives. Sometimes, intermediate members are divided into multiple levels of distribution to expand the consumer base.
Content Sharing Model
The content sharing model involves brand manufacturers collaborating with opinion leaders or influencers to produce high-quality content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WeChat, live streaming, short videos, etc. By sharing this content, they stimulate fans’ desire to shop. Since the audience’s interests and values are often similar, it’s relatively easy to achieve a higher conversion rate. However, this model requires high operational capabilities, and the corresponding costs may increase accordingly.
Group Buying Model
The group buying model relies on the attractiveness of low-price group purchases, gathering multiple people to buy the same product together to achieve the manufacturer’s goal of selling in volume with thin profits. Under this model, consumers may spontaneously promote the business for the sake of purchasing goods at a low price. Through sharing and proliferation, more users join to engage in new shopping behaviors. By focusing on quantity, the retention rate of new users also significantly increases. This model has disrupted traditional e-commerce, and examples like Pinduoduo achieving success within three years and listing in the United States serve as strong evidence of its effectiveness.
Create your social e-commerce model using dumbChat.AI
dumbChat.AI is an instant communication platform that can connect with most social software, including WhatsApp, FB Messenger, SMS, and other social software. Users can communicate with customers on various social software platforms without the need to download multiple apps, making it very convenient. Additionally, it supports the use of chatbots, which can respond to customer questions even when busy, avoiding long delays in replying to customers and maintaining emotional communication with customers to improve user retention rates. It also supports simultaneous collaboration by multiple users, allowing them to coordinate and synchronize management of customer messages to enhance service quality. With the assistance of dumbChat.AI, businesses can utilize various social software platforms to construct a social commerce model, gain customer trust, and increase sales of products and services.
With the development of the internet, the application of social commerce is becoming increasingly widespread. E-commerce is entering social platforms, expanding consumer groups through various marketing techniques, and unleashing more consumer potential. However, e-commerce platforms must always remember that under the high cohesion of communities, once negative reviews appear, they can quickly spread within the community, easily undermining trust from many users. This could potentially lead to the collapse of a community that has been built up over the long term, in a short period of time. In human-centric e-commerce social platforms, if you want to “talk money,” you must first “talk hearts” to users.
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Last Updated on 2024-02-18
