Social Commerce - Why I matter more to your purchase decision and a company's product invention

     During my undergraduate I had a professor whose answer to any question you had, was "Well, did you Google it?" He did this not because he did not know the answer, but to prove the point that we have been given a great gift with the creation of search engines like Google. Gone are the days of wondering, when an answer is a mere search away. Now we have social media, different platforms by which we can connect with our friends and thought leaders. A search engine is no longer an efficient way to find what we are looking for when is comes to a purchase and companies need to start looking into ways to tap into social networks as a means of ultimate word-of-mouth management.
"Nielsen reports that 90 percent of people trust their peers' opinions"(Qualman, 2013, p 72). That is, that consumers are more likely to trust the opinion of someone they know verses the opinions of anonymous reviews brought up on a search engine.

Social commerce is the idea that we as business leaders can harness the power of our consumers' social networks in order to create products, not campaigns, that our consumers need. 

Let's try an example...

     Say for instance you wish to purchase a new bike. Instead of typing in "bike" to a search engine (giving you over 1 million results), you do this but on a social networking site, say Facebook for example (although they have not yet mastered this type of searching).  When you search "bike" on Facebook, you see that 200 of your friends recently commented about bikes, 75 about a recent bike purchase. Of those 75, 25 purchased mountain bikes, which is what you wish to look into further. Seven of your friends purchased the same brand of mountain bike. You're friend John is an avid mountain biker with a lot of knowledge and a tight wallet. You know he would be willing to spend more for quality and knows the best bikes to chose. He is a fan of the mountain bike brand page and notice he has commented about his new bike, saying "I can't believe the quality and value of the new model. This is my third bike from this brand and I have never had any problems! LOVE YOU GUYS!!!". You decide to go to this brand.

     "This intimate knowledge of people within your social network is key, and is the main reason why reviews via social media have gone to the next level compared to other online reviews in the past"(Qualman, 2013, p. 76).  "Next level" means a purchase. Like noted before, you are more likely to trust the review of your mountain biking friend, than a random biker you have never met, nor know their own level of expertise when it comes to mountain biking.

     As a business, we can gather knowledge gained from social networking sites in order to modify, change, and invent old and new products and services. After development, we then take these products to social media, gain feedback, better refine, and then allow our social sites to push these products to consumers based on their thoughts, needs, actions, and connections.

     A lot to process, but imagine it as the world's most efficient and realistic focus group. Creating products that market themselves, doing away with the need to advertising and making it more of an enhancer, than an initiator.

     What company's have you seen that are trying this concept, successful or unsuccessful? How many times have you wanted to show a video that came up on your news feed on Facebook and wished you could search the video title and find it on the site instead of scrolling for minutes trying to find it again?

Qualman, Erik. 2013. Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Second Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.