Social Commerce Measurement

Measurements in the social commerce age much more complicated now because of the impact of mobile technology on both the consumer and the businesses they frequent.  Mobile provides a continuum of measurement information crossing purchases and shopping both online and offline.  This provides a vast amount of information that must be measured together rather than in the individual points.  In order to understand the consumer demands we must take into account the consumers travels and then we must also try to engage the consumer along their travels to interact and collaborate to improve the social commerce, both shopping and purchasing, experience.  

Retailers and marketers must view the customer relationship in measurements rather than simply the clicks for purchases.  Mobile technology has allowed the consumer to mash up online and offline purchases and shopping in a manner that is really impossible to measure by ‘clicks’ and must be measured instead by timeframes, locations and purchases.  These expanded and complicated requirements for effective measurement are themselves evolving and changing as the consumers interact in the social commerce environment.  Mobile technology has had the greatest impact on both the ways that consumers interact with retailers in the marketplace and also the ways that consumers shop and interact with other consumers.  The growth of tools and usage of mobile technology has been probably the single greatest factor in the marketplace reaching the tipping point now that has so dramatically impacted the marketplace and the change is continuing at a breakneck pace.

Social commerce and shopping expands the measurement requirements to account for all of customer interaction across time and locations in order to understand the shopping and purchasing habits of consumers.  These measurements cross tools as well as mobile and non-mobile technologies to build an image or understanding of consumer practices and demands.  This is a dramatic and difficult shift for most retailers and marketing that focused on highlighting products and encouraged the purchase.  The shift requires retailers to truly understand and interact with consumers in a manner they have not been required to interact in the past.  This is requiring the interact and develop a collaborative relationship with consumers to allow new social methods of marketing as well.  

This is an interesting change because it impacts multi-channel legacy retailers in way that online retailers such as Amazon will not experience.  This is getting to the heart of the changes that online retailers have driven and now we are seeing the changes in the marketplace circling back to online retailers and seeing these online retailers expanding into the brick and mortar market.  The Amazon expansion into the brick and mortar marketplace though is not simply opening a new channel outlet in the same manner as other brick and mortar retailers.  Amazon as usual is experimenting with the market to remake and expand the Amazon customer experience.

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?