Social commerce is the direct result of the millennial generation refusing to accept the existing terms of retail shopping and purchasing. This resulted in millennials creating a new social commerce environment and practices to support their usage demands and improve their shopping and purchasing productivity. Now we are seeing the impact on the marketplace of this new way of shopping and purchasing which is causing retailers to struggle to keep pace with the level of discontinuous change. The growth of the millennial generation in the retail marketplace is causing their changing demands and practices to generate a larger impact on the marketplace and this impact has been growing as a result of the realization and embrace of the social commerce capabilities by greater and greater percentages of consumers.
Social commerce is encouraged and supported by may social media tools from Facebook advertising and person to person shopping options to the expansion of Google maps and integration with Google apps and services. In between there are a vast number of social commerce services and mobile apps available with more being delivered every day it seems. This robust growth in the social commerce market is the result of dramatic growth in usage in large part due to the value provided to consumers. Consumer growth and usage of social commerce tools has truly reached the point of critical mass and this usage must be recognized and embraced by large and small retailers alike to survive and grow in the future.
This embrace and dramatic growth in usage of social commerce tools and especially mobile apps has changed consumer shopping practices forever. A key change driving the usage is the dramatic growth in consumer collaboration supporting shopping and purchasing needs. The foundation of social commerce is the social networks and consumers of all ages have become very comfortable with sharing and collaborating through these social networks and this has driven their embrace of social commerce practices as well. Large retailers must understand these changing demands and consumer practices in order to incorporate into their shopping and purchasing practices.
The retail brick and mortar shopping outlets have already changed the retail marketplace. You can see this every day as traffic to shopping malls decreases and eCommerce purchases increases. These changes in the shopping and purchasing patterns must be recognized and embraced by large legacy retailers to reshape their entire shopping usage and practices to meet and support the consumer changing demands. This requires that these retailers recognize and embrace the social commerce shopping practices and begin to expand their consumer collaboration practices.
And now for the audience participation portion of the show…
ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors. How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience? Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes. In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas. How can you support these continuously changing requirements?
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