Our web and twitter alerts for “f-commerce” have gone berserk over the last few days, overflowing our feed boxes. So here’s the latest on who’s saying what in the fabulous world of f-commerce…
- Ruth Mortimer: Marketing Week “Brands must believe the f-commerce hype” (Why? 1: We live in a world where instant gratification and f-commerce brings instant gratification to retail (no tedious messing around going to web-stores, 2: Facebook is the world’s biggest marketplace), 3: Customer closeness and personalisation – using the social for instant (and compelling) personalisation, 4: Makes ROI on word of mouth (likes) measurable).
- Jay Dunn: Social Media Today “Watch Out, E-Commerce and M-Commerce: Here Comes ‘F-Commerce’ and He’s Ready to Steal Your Girlfriend” (Why? f-commerce was the topic du jour at NRF’s Innovate 2011 – Wetseal (John Kubo CIO) generated 100K store visits with an FB model search contest, and FB now generates 20% of e-commerce sales). “The concept of engagement as a goal is lazy marketing-speak that’s too easy to hide behind in the absence of activating a customer or fan base to buy your products in numbers enough to matter” [we couldn’t agree more]
- Mitch Joel: Six Pixels of Separation “F-Commerce – Rise Of The Facebook Consumer” (Why? Facebook is huge and continues to grow at a staggering pace (Facebook reaches each almost nine in ten social network users and 57.1 percent of all Internet users (US) (eMarketer) and 75% of Facebook have “liked” a brand). The arrival of Social Commerce – Shopping, by its very nature, is a social act and it was only a matter of time before social media-like tools became prevalent throughout the e-commerce world; two big innovations were the Facebook Like and Facebook Credits (available in-store like iTunes cards). The arrival of F-Commerce – Facebook-enhanced retail – creates a digital trail between social media engagement and sales. Best Buy and P&G (Pampers) are part of the f-commerce vanguard.
- Jeff Bullas: Jeff Bullas.com “F-Commerce: Is Facebook The New Shop Of The Future?” It could well be. Notes that Facebook is currently testing a “Buy With Friends” program, which allows brands to offer discount incentives to users who encourage their friends to buy the same item by publishing purchases on friends’ news feeds.
- Jeff Bullas: JeffBullas.com “Is Facebook Killing Off The Company Website?” No, but people are moving from the Web to Facebook for brand interaction – Coca-Cola’s website traffic is down 40% in one year, Nabisco’s (Ore0) web traffic is down 74% – both have healthy Facebook pages (22m, 8m)
- Thomas Crampton: Ogilvy “Will Facebook kill the corporate [e-commerce] website?” No
- Jamie Yap: ZDNet “Companies turning to Facebook for consumer interactions and commercial transactions will not spell the end of corporate Web sites” – security, reliability, and ownership of data is why there will always be a place of e-commerce on corporate websites
- Janice Diner: JWT Retail Slam 2011 (Horizon Studios) “F-Commerce – Turning “Like” to “Buy”… Every industry and vertical is going to be rethought in a social way” Four ways retail is using Facebook (1: f-commerce (‘Purchasing real goods with real currency without leaving Facebook’, 2: open-graph f-commerce )’Facebook influence on e-commerce websites – Likes sharing and recommendations’, 3: Facebook Credits – the virtual currency used to purchase in games and non-game applications, 4: Facebook Deals -‘ check-in on Facebook on a smartphone and see the special deals from nearby businesses’ – f-commerce is used for monetized sampling (Pampers, Pantene), loyalty (Starbucks), group-buy (Disney), offering utility (Delta ticket window), for cause marketing (WWF f-store), gifting (Sears, Sephora), DTC (disintermediated brand-consumer sales) (P&G, Unilever) (see presentation embedded below)
- Pam Dyer: The Customer Collective “Facebook Stores Deliver Sames Sales Rates as Web Sites” – analysis of the recent WebTrends/Adgregate Markets report “The Effect of Social Networks and the Mobile Web on Website Traffic and the Inevitable Rise of Facebook Commerce” (summary coming soon) – which found that “Facebook commerce conversion rates range from 2% to 4% and are on par with e-Commerce Web sites. (avg. 3.4%, according to Forrester/Shop.org)”
- Carla Delgado: FB-Commerce “What is F-Commerce?” (Video is in Spanish)
- Andrew Japp: Cimex “Social commerce and f-commerce: One of the fastest growing areas of e-commerce” cites Forbes.com, a brand’s Facebook fan is 41% more likely to recommend the company and 28% more likely to continue using them in the future. What is also interesting is that on average a fan is worth $133.38 (£84.33) and spends $71.84 (£44.43) more per year than a non-fan
- Kaitlin Gallucci: Digital Pivot “From E-Commerce to F-Commerce” cites Dell‘s Head of Social Media Manish Mehta, “Social media may not have driven sales in an obvious way so far, but the next logical step will be transactional social media. When you can buy products through Facebook, rather than just liking them, we’ll start to see a shift in the role of social media in the business.”
- Marie Jung: “Facebook, the new Eldorado of e-commerce…f-shopping has only just begun”– why f-commerce? because it makes shopping more fun (and more social).