Social shopping nearing a tipping point?

Posted on December 16, 2007 by Martin Zagorsek

Social shopping/retailing has been getting a lot of press lately, especially its role in helping small retailers reach customers. Top sites include stylehive, Kaboodle and ThisNext, which are all dedicated to online shopping, with users flagging favorite objects available at any online retailer.

chair Social shopping nearing a tipping point?
Like more general-purpose social networks, these sites play to users’ egos by having profile pages that show off a user’s individual taste. As is typical in most communities, you get a small handful of alpha-users who generate a disproportionate share of the content.. sites like stylehive encourage these people by allowing users to “follow” lead trendsetters and receive updates when they flag new items.

While social shopping is getting a lot of buzz, the volume generated from these sites barely registers - I wasn’t able to find any stats as to what percentage of online retail dollars come from social shopping. Keep in mind, too, that online sales are still only about 5 percent of total retail in the US. But the phenomenon is likely to spread, especially when it migrates to more general social networks like Facebook and Myspace.

When it comes to shopping of any kind, only a tiny minority of the population can be called tastemakers and the rest are followers, buying whatever friends or magazines say is stylinsh, or whatever is put in front of them by retailers. But there’s also been a resurgence of interest in original and unusual goods. For all the homogenization that’s been happening in the retail landscape, flea markets never really went away. As online shopping matures, it will be interesting to see the balance between the walmart.com-style megasites and the bazaar-like style represented by social shopping.

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» Filed Under Content Driven Commerce, Social Networking, Word of Mouth

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