Social Commerce is a buzzword and it’s hot lexical real estate, evoking a fusion of two big digital trends of “social media” and “e-commerce”. As a result, social commerce means different things to different people (see list below), and it’s been the target of a number definitional land-grabs by businesses seeking to define the term [...]

5 Mashable Hot Social Shopping trends courtesy of Clay McDaniel of social media marketing agency, Spring Creek Group, and then five more from his readers and us.  Clay asks the pertinent question – “what is social shopping?”.  Alas no answer is offered, only a list of illustrative examples.  Good examples though. 1. Instantaneous Product Reviews – [...]

Daniel Flamberg over at iMedia predicts that the mainstreaming of social networking platforms means that marketers could be ready to take social media marketing to the next level; Social Commerce (Level One: Monitoring, Level Two: Brand Building, Level Three: Social Commerce) – using connected networks of friends as a cost-efficient viral media channels for merchandizing [...]

When the world’s second largest retailer jumps on a trend with the world’s fourth largest advertising group – it’s worth taking note, and looking for opportunities. Publicis through K4 (offshoot to Publicis Digitas, K4 is a digital cell dedicated to Carrefour) have launched “Faceshopping” a deal feed app for Facebook – daily shopping deals from [...]

In a DMNews article this week entitled: Social commerce: Strategies for extending online shopping beyond the e-commerce site, Fumi Matsumoto, co-founder & CTO of Allurent (Charlotte Russe and Reebok’s Facebook store software), outlines a three phased solution for doing social commerce. For Allurent, social commerce is all about extending online shopping beyond e-commerce sites to social destinations.  It involves [...]

eConsultancy has been producing reports and presentations on social commerce since 2007 – and it’s insightful stuff. So we’ve distilled their work into a top 10 list of social commerce insights and predictions. Sources (some public, some members only) and accompanying facts are listed below. Top 10 Social Commerce Insights (Top Takeouts) 1. Social commerce is [...]

The cartoonist Tom Fishburne is a thorn in the side of social media marketing zealots, with curative cartoons for delusions of grandeur. So, it’s easy to take a swipe at Facebook pages for grocery products like Vanish, like your parents turning up to the school disco, but how do you know if social media marketing is [...]

Burberry has launched a new Facebook Connect powered gallery of its trench coats – modelled by you. Okay, so the Art of the Trench app is crying out for integration into Burberry’s e-commerce site/cart (and adding approved reviews, even if only professional reviews, would be a nice touch) – but it’s slick, engaging (even if uses [...]

British high street retail institution Marks & Spencer has revamped its social commerce strategy; incorporating customer reviews on its site, adopting Twitter for promotions and Facebook communities to build community. In an interview for eConsultancy, Business Development Manager for M&S Sienne Veit also indicated openness to running sponsored reviews with bloggers – with disclosure, and that [...]

Post over at DecisionStep (ShopTogether software – and behind Barbie’s foray into social commerce), predicting that we’ll be seeing social commerce apps on travel sites soon. Of course, most travel sites (e.g. TripAdvisor.com) already include social commerce apps in the form of user ratings and reviews – but what DecisionStep see is a future where people [...]