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.
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Informative post. Online shopping has really gone through an evolution in the past decade. At first, it was just about the availability of information, (e.g. what store can I go to for toaster?). Then it is about social and sharing, where shoppers can leverage off the experience of others. The success of social sites like Facebook and Twitter illustrates this trend. I think we're heading for the next phase of this evolution where online shopping providers are going to make use of the vast amount of data out there (both machine collected and human generated) to provide good insight to help the individual shop. These next generation sites would need to become a trusted friend and adviser that not only tell you where you can get something at a good price, but advise you on what to get, and when to get it, all based on intelligently analyzed preference about you and your network. That http://wishabi.ca site you mention up there is Canadian based, but seems to have good potential to break through to the third phase of online shopping if they can get it polished up well.
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