Social Shopping: Playing up on Consumer's Micro-moments

Social shopping is catching on, in times of social distancing and brands – big and small, online and offline are jumping into the fray to capitalize on it. For digital natives, to whom digital lives and activities matter more than real selves, the pandemic has only intensified the movement. Social shopping, in addition to making the buying process convenient and simple, enhances visibility and ‘cool’ quotient of the shoppers by bringing in ‘social validation’ of their purchases.

In the world of digital marketing, content is the king and shoppable content is the diamond in the crown. Put simply, shoppable content is branded or user-generated content (UGC) tagged with products allowing users to shop instantly and are at the core of social shopping. By leveraging the power of AR, visually rich content and 3D, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat are looking to create immersive and interactive CX. And they are not just focusing on shoppers alone, but a whole ecosystem encompassing brands, influencers, experts and community.

Broadly speaking, brands are adopting two distinct models to enable social shopping. First being an ‘all-digital’ approach where everything starting from product discovery to payments and checkout happens right within the social media platform/app (or in some cases, shoppers get redirected to brand’s website for checkout). This, currently is the one that is most trending – both in terms of popularity and adoption.

Facebook’s recently launched ‘Shops’ is mainly targeted at SMBs to help them set up free storefronts. While this offers business opportunity for Facebook in terms of ads, payments and other services, it enables businesses to run cost-effective targeted promotions. Facebook eventually plans to let users browse store catalogues and make direct purchases from the chat window and also to enable shopping from live streams by allowing brands and creators to tag items from their catalogues so as they appear below live videos. Instagram, on the other hand allows users to securely store payment information and complete the purchase on the chosen brand’s feeds or Stories without leaving the comfort of their couches.

Pinterest, the popular discovery platform offers a powerful visual search tool to surface shoppable products or suggestions with current price and a direct link to the checkout on the retailer’s site. It has recently enhanced its visual search functionality to display results of all Shoppable Pins. Snapchat, not originally known for social commerce has been betting big on AR, letting users to digitally ‘try-on’ a full wardrobe or offering ‘virtual installation’ and ‘voice scan’ to make the whole experience hyper-personal while focusing largely on beauty and fashion. Then there are pure-play native social shopping platforms such as Tuli, which seeks to create a digital mall where one can buy favourite things and experiences directly from friends, celebrities and influencers that inspire them. Unlike the bigger rivals, anybody can be an Influencer and receive a minimum of two percent credit for future purchases from every sale they recommend.

The second and the lesser prevalent model, is the omnichannel social shopping which uses a blend of digital and in-store experiences to drive CX. Burberry’s social retail store uses Tencent’s WeChat mini program through which shoppers can unlock exclusive content, personalize experiences and share them in real-time with their communities. It also features an interactive window that responds to body movement and QR code-labelled products that connect to digital screens. Nordstrom, the luxury department store chain, on the other hand integrates interactions from social media into in-store activity. The store has brought Pinterest popularity into the store by creating a dedicated section of "Top pinned" items, complete with labels bearing the Pinterest logo attached, allowing shoppers to see products popular among fellow consumers and fashionistas without having to pull out their phone.

Be it all-digital or omnichannel, social shopping is only set to explode as marketers go all-out to create frictionless consumerism. The triggers are going to get smarter to tap into users’ micro-moments and we can expect new models of creator-influencer-shopper engagement and monetization to emerge.