Online shopping using real-time information (part 2)

As promised, I will now present part 2 of the real time e-commerce story. Looking at trends on the internet, it is clear that social communities become more and more important. E-commerce and online shopping cannot escape from this phenomenon, which is particularly shown in the USA, where social shopping increases in popularity. Social shopping combines e-commerce with traditional shopping and can exist both online and in the real world. The idea behind it is to make use of the wisdom of the crowd: communicating with users and collect information about products and prices.

Online social shopping

For online social shopping, social network environments are often used. Users create shopping lists which they can share with their friends. Some websites reward their users for their participation, for instance when they share information with the community. The participants often receive reputations points or even real money. An example of a website with such policy is Wishabi. So at the one hand, this is beneficial for customers, because it is easier for them to find cheap products. On the other hand, the reach of companies increases dramatically because of these social communities and information sharing behavior.

Social shopping in the ‘real world’

Social shopping also exists in the real world, sharing your shopping stories with people you know. Imagine that you are in a clothes store and picks one item. The mirror reflects your image, but you also see celebrities wearing the same item. Meanwhile a webcam takes a picture of you and projects it on a website for your friends to see. They can advice you whether to buy the actual item or not. So real-world social shopping makes it possible to connect the customer inside the store with his social community outside the store.


Your item displayed in the clothes store

We’ve seen a few examples of online shopping using real-time information, which can be machine generated information but also information which comes directly from your friends. I hope I have made it clear that this field of study is rapidly developing and becomes more and more important in the marketing strategy of many companies.

Online shopping using real-time information (part 1)

While the internet offers more and more real-time information, the content on most webshops is particularly outdated. Yes, it is possible to see opinions of your fellow consumer, but these reviews are mainly from a month or even a year ago. These webshops doesn’t use the fundamental power of the internet: direct and real-time interaction.

Over the past years e-commerce have made it possible to buy and sell products or services via the internet. This online marketing develops more and more towards real-time e-commerce. Examples of these developments are live banners, which refresh real-time to show the current prices, and live campaigns, which stop automatically when all products are sold. Another example is live e-mail, in which content is composed only at the time of opening. Because the content in the e-mail is associated with the inventory system of the related company, it will always show the current situation. As a result, the consumer is always able to see what products already have been sold out.

Live e-mail, showing a product that already has been sold out

Live shopping

Live shopping is an alternative to traditional online shopping. Mostly a single product is temporary offered for a very favorable price, often the daily lowest on the internet. The price of this product is usually far below the recommended selling price. Because the offer is temperorary, consumer have to decide quickly whether to buy it or not, resulting in many impulsive purchases. The American company Woot was the first company to launch this idea of offering one product for 24 hours at a very low price.

Live shopping at Woot

These examples of real-time e-commerce are particularly from the Business to Consumer (B2C) point of view. Next time I will be back with another example of real-time e-commerce, in which social communities become more and more important. So keep following this blog!