Is social commerce worth the investment?

There’s a useful post over at of cloud-based commerce company Venda, that asks a simple, but very pertinent question, is social commerce worth the investment?

The short answer – according to the post – is a qualified yes, if retailers adopt the right approach and tone.

For the e-consultancy post, social commerce is not about turning social media into a marketplace, but using social media to promote the marketplace/site you’re selling on – essentially through social sharing.  Use e-commerce software to sell, and social software to share. Simple, right?

But is that it? Is social commerce really just regular e-commerce with social sharing added in?  Well it’s certainly part of it.  

But there’s more to social commerce than a plugin.  The opportunity is to use social commerce for business model innovation – using a social mindset to create and capture customer value in new and different ways.

• Tuangou (team buying) – selling to groups, not individuals
• Pop-up Retail - using social media as a channel for selling limited editions. (e.g., this year Mercedes launched a special limited edition Smart Car sold only on the Chinese version of Twitter)
• Collaborative Consumption – selling stuff for sharing
• Collaborative Commerce – using social technology to manage supply chain alliances and collaboration. 

Social plugins are a good way to start with social commerce, they are worth the investment.  But the big wins will happen when companies adopt a social mindset to do business model innovation – by thinking we-commerce not me-commerce.  The future of social commerce will happen with business model innovation, not a plugin.

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