Social Commerce: Looking Back and Forward
Renata Gonçalves Curty
Syracuse University
School of Information Studies
337 Hinds Hall
rcurty@syr.edu
Ping Zhang
Syracuse University
School of Information Studies
328 Hinds Hall
pzhang@syr.edu
ABSTRACT
Social commerce can be briefly described as commerce
activities mediated by social media. In social commerce,
people do commerce or intentionally explore commerce
opportunities by participating and/or engaging in a
collaborative online environment. As a relatively new
phenomenon first widely acknowledged in 2005, social
commerce presents new opportunities to examine issues
related to information/content, business strategies,
management, technologies, and people’s behavior. This
article presents a qualitative longitudinal study which
systematically examines technological features and tools in
social commerce websites to illustrate their evolution and
impacts on the formation of social commerce practice today
and its potential future. Using captures crawled by the
Wayback Machine, fifteen websites are analyzed from the
year they were “born” to the year of 2010. The analyses are
guided by a semi-structured checklist of expected and desired
tools and features based on a literature review in social
commerce. The study finds that social commerce activities
appeared as early as the late 90s and that there are different
approaches to incorporating social channels and social
networks. In addition, the findings support a preliminary
classification of social commerce websites, a realignment of
the term’s conceptualization and the anticipation of possible
new directions for this market segment.
Keywords
Social Commerce, Social Shopping, qualitative longitudinal
study, Wayback Machine. Web 2.0, Social Media.
INTRODUCTION
Social commerce officially appears in the literature in 2005
to refer to ecommerce new way of doing commerce. More
than just a buzzword or a neologism for the combination of
social media and ecommerce, it represents an emerging
phenomenon stimulated by the web 2.0 wave (Wang, 2009;
Wang & Zhang, forthcoming). Through wish lists, fora,
chat rooms, locator applications (geo-tagging), blogs,
podcasts, tagging, social networks, ranking,
recommendation systems, etc.; social commerce enables
consumers to share information, experiences and opinions
about what, where and from whom to buy (Jascanu, Jascanu
& Nicolau, 2007).
In this new way of commerce mediated by social media, both
consumers and firms benefit. Consumers make informed
decisions based on information not only from the firms, but
also from other consumers. Firms can make more profits by
attracting and alluring potential buyers via positive
recommendations by existing consumers. Mardsen (2010)
sees social commerce as an alternative way to monetize
social media by the application of a two-way strategy: by
helping people to connect where they usually buy or by
guiding people to buy where they usually connect.
Thus, this phenomenon is a rich territory in which to
explore issues strongly connected to the Information
Science realm, such as: information behavior, information
sharing, user-generated content (UGC), web 2.0,
collaboration resources and platforms, web presence and
crowdsourcing, to name a few.
Not surprisingly, good practices in social commerce,
especially the ones concerning the information perspective
such as recommendations, reviews and ratings, have been
expanded to other sectors of society than the retail sector.
Libraries are a good example of this “benchmarking” where
referral and user generated content have been assuming
important functions for strengthening ties between
community members in digital environments such as
OPACs and repositories.
Based on the evidence of how social commerce websites
and practices are mushrooming over the years and how they
contribute to the understanding of some important issues
addressed by the Information Science field, this empirical
study analyzes what technical features and tools have been
incorporated in what ways over time in social commerce
websites to support people’s engagement and participation
as well as business strategies.
THE SOCIAL COMMERCE LITERATURE
The label “social commerce” is first introduced by Yahoo!
in 2005, with the earliest academic article entailing it in
2007 (Jascanu, Jascanu & Nicolau, 2007). The starting
point for the concept is believed to be based on the book
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowieck, where he
outlines the key principles and benefits of collective actions
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for better decisions and for what he defines as collectively
intelligent solutions that are based on the principles of
opinion diversity, people’s independence, decentralization
and aggregation (Surowieck, 2004). Social commerce is
envisioned to combine both B2C (Business to Consumer)
and C2C (Consumer to Consumer) approaches. Consumers
can collaborate and shop in an environment similar to social
networking platforms combined with one or more remotely
located shopping partners (Zhu, Benbasat & Jiang, 2006;
Leitner & Grechinig, 2007a, 2007b; Stephen & Toubia,
2010).
Both the concept and the practice of social commerce have
been constantly evolving, with recent trends pointing to an
even more prolific expansion to the mobile platform (Wang
& Zhang, forthcoming). A survey conducted in the UK with
2000 respondents aged between 18-65 years old reveals that
53% of consumers review items and services online
(Immediate Future, 2010). The same report finds that
consumers’ reviews are considered 157% more effective
than traditional advertisements, indicating the power of
consumers’ opinions in final purchase decisions.
The literature also introduces some key concepts that are
frequently associated with the social commerce
phenomenon, as described in Table 1. From those,
Crowdsourcing, Consumer Centric Communities and User
Generated Content are often applied to discuss the peoplebased
aspect of social commerce. In contrast, the other
three are applied more often to discuss strategies to promote
appropriate virtual environments for social commerce
activities, and how firms can benefit from them.
Wang & Zhang (forthcoming) introduce a framework to
understand social commerce from four perspectives:
people, business strategies, technology, and information.
The people perspective represents the individuals,
consumers, communities and societies which are essential
to the social aspect of social commerce. The business
perspective embraces strategies, business models and
opportunities for retailers and other entities that are
perceived to benefit or to make profits from social
commerce transactions. The technology perspective refers
to the information and communication technology
infrastructure and applications responsible for social
commerce’s technological feasibility. The information
perspective symbolizes the particularity of this extremely
content driven environment where a considerable and rich
amount of content related to business, products or services,
or which is simply social in nature, is constantly produced
(Wang & Zhang, forthcoming).
Concepts Definitions References
Consumer
Centric
Community
(CCC)
A community which allows
the use of the synergistic
experience of crowds,
characterized by intensive
communication between
potential customers and stepby-step
aggregation of
information about products,
prices and deals.
Leitner &
Grechinig
(2008a;
2008b)
Crowdsourcing
Combination of “crowd" and
“outsourcing” coined by Jeff
Howe in 2006 to represent the
gap between professionals and
amateurs, which has been
diminished, and the
importance of taking
advantage of the talent of the
public (the crowd).
Leitner &
Grechinig
(2007b;
2008a;
2008b)
Multichannel
Shopping
A technological structure
which enables consumers to
purchase retail products in a
consolidated fashion, using
multiple channels (store visits,
catalog browsing, phone calls,
online shopping etc.). The
application of different
channels to enhance users’
online shopping experience.
Leckner &
Schlichter
(2005)
Revenue
Models
(for Social
Commerce)
Alternative ways to make
money/profit and benefit from
the shopping transaction.
Some often applied to social
commerce websites are:
onsite/contextual
advertisement, affiliate
programs (directing users to
third-party companies),
membership fees and direct
sales.
Leitner &
Grechinig
(2008);
Kang &
Park (2009)
Service
Oriented
Architecture
(SOA)
A system architecture
approach which views every
application or resource as a
service, implementing a
specific identifiable set of
business functions, by
combining multi-channels and
real-time applications.
Liu,
Jih-Shyr &
Pinel
(2005)
User
Generated
Content
(UGC)
The collection of content
(comments, reviews, ratings,
etc.) which represents the
evaluation of online shopping
experiences and
consumers/user's opinion about
brand reputation as well as the
tangible (product) and
intangible (service) aspects of
the shopping event.
Ghose &
Ipeirotes
(2009);
Leitner &
Grechinig
(2008a;
2008b)
Table 1 – Social commerce correlated concepts.
Using Wang and Zhang’s framework, we summarize the
literature on the most common issues identified in social
commerce (Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Issues addressed by the academic literature
in social commerce.
Based on the literature review, several expected and
desirable technological features and tools are identified to
support business strategies, people engagement and
interaction, and information production and sharing in
social commerce. These are classified in Table 2.
Category Features
Expected
E-commerce
functions
shopping cart/bag, checkout/payment, product
visualization (images), product price, shipping
Social
Channels
chats, fora, groups/communities, friends' lists,
user's blogs, website blog, user's profile, wiki
platform
Content to
Socialize
emoticons, favorites, images (buyers' choice),
open comments, wish lists, podcast/videos,
rankings, ratings , tags, tag clouds, polls
Desired
Social
Networks
Bebo, Delicious, Digg In, Facebook,
Foursquare, Hi5, Myspace, Second Life,
Stumble, Twitter
Organizers/
Mgmt Tools
calendars, geolocators, price comparison, RSS
(syndication), to-do lists, shoplists, price alerts
Mobile Site mobile version, mobile apps
Augmented
Reality
3D bar codes, avatars (shopping assistants),
avatars (user), virtual reality tools (fitting
rooms, shopping visit)
Table 2 – Expected and desired technological features.
Expected Features
• Because they are considered the next generation of
ecommerce, social commerce websites are expected to
inherit some ecommerce functions which are listed, but
not exhaustively described in table 2.
• Social channels correspond to the endogenous spaces
which are provided by websites for users to interact with
each other and to establish a trust network. Also, it can be
an alternative for retailers to curating their own consumer
data warehouse and can allow them to preserve an
internal shopping environment, without directly involving
third parties.
• User Generated Contents produced by social commerce
websites are considered a critical element in social
commerce.
Desired Features
• Social Networks represent the external social structures
with which websites can bridge connections and enhance
consumers’ shopping experiences. It assumes a broad
meaning which includes virtual communities and
bookmark-sharing services within communities or by
groups’ members. Also, this is a desired element to
achieve social media monetization strategies (Mardsen
2010). It might be argued that this is also an expected
feature; however, that classification assumes that an
internal social channel would be sufficient to build the
collective ties/nodes for a social shopping activity.
• Organizers/Management Tools are desired elements to
enhance a shopping experience. They can help consumers
plan their research and buying activities, be alert to sales
and best deals, and receive updated information
according to their interests and profiles.
• The sophistication and pricing reduction of mobile
devices/technologies (smartphones and personal digital
assistants PDAs) promote a revolution in web access
behavior. The pocket-size computing is been a strong
competitor of the desktop generation. Thus, this
popularization is an important indicator for social
websites to be aware of and, to facilitate the shopping
experience, to provide appropriate web interfaces and
applications for.
• Augmented reality functions blend the real world and
computer generated data/content. Liu et al. (2005) , Ye et
al. (2005) and, Shen; Khoury & Shirmohammadi (2007)
state that virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence
(AI) help promote more realistic communication and
interaction with products through more human-like
interactive interfaces, which would be a desirable feature.
The literature analysis results are used to guide the empirical
analysis of a set of social commerce websites, as detailed below.
RESEARCH METHOD
Given the novelty of social commerce and the lack of
academic studies in this sphere, social commerce has been
approached more in a speculative way than discussed based
on empirical evidence. To overcome such gaps, this study is
rooted in examining evidence in order to draw conclusions
on social commerce scenarios. Specifically, we are
interested in taking the technological perspective to
examine the technical features and tools and to illustrate
their evolution and impacts on several aspects of social
commerce, such as business strategies, people’s behaviors,
etc. In other words, we address these research questions:
what technical features and tools have been incorporated
overtime in social commerce websites? What functions these
features and tools have been performed to support people’s
engagement and participation, and business strategies?
From the four perspectives proposed by Wang & Zhang
(forthcoming), this research focuses specially on the
technological perspective. Technological features and tools
represent the backbone for social interactions, content
generation and information sharing. Thus, through
observation of the tools incorporated in social commerce
websites and by verification of their functions overtime, it
is possible to infer different business strategies and
practices by firms over the years. In addition, among the
four perspectives, technology is the most explicit and
tangible for observational purposes.
This study provides systematic and repeated observations
overtime to identify the progress of social commerce
websites tools and technological features. Therefore, the
study follows a qualitative longitudinal research design.
Traditionally, longitudinal studies are applied to measure and
analyze variables and predictors over time through regression
analysis in quantitative research (Hedeker & Gibbons, 2006).
Holland, Thomson & Henderson (2006) emphasize the
limitation of quantitative methods in Social Sciences and
stress the importance of qualitative research for the
examination of a process, taking its context and particularities
into account. The authors believe that “qualitative longitudinal
research is predicated on the investigation and interpretation
of change over time and process in social contexts” (Holland,
Thomson & Henderson, 2006, p. 1).
Because the universe of social commerce websites is
somewhat incommensurable and a plethora of new websites
is added to the World Wide Web every day, the selection of
relevant cases for examination is challenging. To avoid bias
or an arbitrary selection, we selected websites according to
the most recent list of top social commerce websites,
published in 2008, by the renowned blog Social Media
Trader1
, which compiled the monthly traffic data from three
different sources: Compete, Quantcast and MSN Adlabs. The
original list contained 17 websites, among which Zebo
(www.zebo.com) is no longer in activity and Glimpse
(www.glimpse.com) is not accessible. As a result, a total of
15 websites were included in this study (Table 3).
A longitudinal qualitative study requires researchers to have
access to observe the same cases over time. In our study,
1
http://www.socialmediatrader.com
such data would be the exact interface within the different
features of a particular website at the time of observation.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine (WM,
http://web.archive.org) provides an ideal tool for our data
collection. WM has been maintained by the Internet Archive
Initiative since 1996, a non-profit organization which curates
a digital library of Internet sites. WM captures non-static
screenshots through the lifetime of an URL since 1996 or
since the URL’s inception. The new version of WM has
more visual features than the former and displays a calendar
with the websites’ captures, from which the evolution can
be tracked by years, months and days.
Despite the fact that Wayback Machine can present some
limitations of navigation within the web pages of a given
website due to password-protected zones, robots exclusions or
in conditions in dynamic sites, it is been recognized as a
valuable instrument to track and investigate the evolution of
websites. For example, Murphy, Hashim and O’Connor (2008)
conducted a research study on WM validity for data collection
and for scientific arguments’ support purposes. They conclude
that, regarding predictive, nomological and convergent
validity, WM is a reliable source for tracking websites’
content, age and updates. They underscore that this tool is
essential for researches who aim to explore the evolution of
websites instead of using one point investigations, because it
provides a basis for longitudinal studies in an environment that
is known as extremely ephemeral and unstable.
Table 3 – Social Commerce Websites Analyzed.
In this study, for each of the 15 websites, we considered only
the first and last captions per year, from the website’s initial
activity to the end of 2010. The strategy is to enrich the
analysis, but also to preserve a standardized way for operating
the data collection in circumstances where the websites did not
have an equal number of captures or were not captured on the
same days of a year. Each capture was then explored and
navigated (whenever possible) to gain more details. The
data obtained was coded in a spreadsheet. A semistructured
checklist based on the expected and desired
technological features (Table 2) guided the data collection
and a preliminary coding scheme, which was flexible for
the inclusion of possible non-predicted and non-listed
features and tools. Data analyses were conducted to
examine data across years and across websites to gain a
holistic picture of social commerce websites.
FINDINGS
It is important to report that the data collection misses some
data for Amazon.com. WM did not capture any screenshots
in years 2000 and 2001. Thus, from the expected 24 captures
for 12 years (1999-2010), only 20 were incorporated in the
study.
Also, it is also important to underscore that the research did
not aim to establish direct comparisons between websites or
to evaluate them in terms of completeness of technological
features or tools, but rather to collect, in a very exploratory
way, evidences of the social commerce trails over the years
and to provide a narrative of facts, with the expectation of
contributing to a better understanding of this phenomenon.
Any attempt at a one-by-one comparison would require at
least that the cases have the same target market and same
period of existence, characteristics which our data
collection does not present. Moreover, a retrospective
analysis would not be sufficient to provide explanations
about possible discrepancies without in-depth knowledge of
the historical circumstances of each case.
Due to the extensive dataset and the purpose of the study (to
gain a big picture of social commerce websites as a whole) the
findings are presented in subsections according to the main
observations.
Surprise! Social Commerce Found in Late 90s
Despite the fact that social commerce is officially labeled
around 2005 by practitioners in trade articles (Wang, 2009)
and two years later in the academic literature, our findings
show that social commerce is in action in the late 90s, if not
earlier.
Amazon and Epinions are earlier adopters of an initial
referral shopping strategy In the first capture in August
1999, Amazon’s website shows the feature “purchase
circles”, which has the same purpose as the currently wellknown
recommendation systems and consumer
communities. Wish Lists and email indications of products
to friends are also offered to consumers and visitors around
that time.
With a different name, but with the same purpose of sharing
experiences and opinions, also in 1999, Epinions offers the
option of open reviews, ratings (stars), gift recommendations,
forums for members and what is called a “community of
trust”. Basically, an internal social network is composed of
members who are selected at consumers’ discretion
according to their reputation in the community as good or
helpful reviewers.
Such evidence indicates that the dawn of social commerce
initiatives had happened several years before social
commerce was officially named and gained broad attention
in the mid of 2000s.
Ecommerce Functions: Essential for Social Commerce?
There seems an expectation that ecommerce functions are
basic requirements for social commerce websites. Yet, out of
the 15 websites, only Amazon and Etsy present functions for
consumers to accomplish shopping activities after selecting
product(s)/service(s) with tools such as shopping cart/bag,
shipping options selection, payment zone/safe https, and
confirmation. On the other hand, all 15 websites provide
users with product/service descriptions, prices/price
comparison, pictures or videos, and the possibility that the
shopping transaction may be completed in a third party
(external) website.
This discovery makes us wonder about a point that is still
not explored by the literature: what essentially defines a
social commerce website? Presumably, the literal
interpretation of the term requires commerce transaction
functions, but if the buying intention is present despite the
lack of purchase accomplishment at the website, then can
we still consider that website as a social commerce
website?
The web environment makes it difficult to set the boundaries
of where a consumer starts or ends a shopping activity.
Furthermore, not all consumers access online stores with the
final purpose of buying online. Some might use those spaces
essentially for collecting impressions and opinions which can
support their decisions about a selected product which will be
purchased in another online or brick and mortar site.
In this sense, the literature analyzes and the empirical study
discloses a broader view of the concept. Collectively, social
commerce can be understood as the activities by which
people shop or intentionally explore shopping opportunities
by participating and/or engaging in a collaborative online
environment.
There is clearly a lack of consensus on what is defined as a
social commerce website. For example, Amarasinghe
(2010) presents an idea of a “true” social commerce
website, where the social commerce business model is a
result of the intersection of an ecommerce firm and social
network websites in order to avoid scalability and revenue
models traps (Figure 2). Nonetheless, even the author
questions whether some examples really fit the true
business model.
Based on the analysis of the 15 websites, we establish a
preliminary categorization for social commerce websites:
direct sales and referrals.
• Direct sales: this category includes those social commerce
websites that count on an internal full-transaction platform for
commercialization, such as Amazon and Etsy, from which, if
desired, consumers can complete the full purchase cycle
without being directed to third parties. Amazon is an example
of B2C blending internal socialization between consumers,
whereas Etsy follows a C2C approach through a community
centered market place composed by artists and collectors who
buy and sell on the website.
• Referrals: this includes websites at which potential buyers
can explore others’ recommendations and opinions to form
better informed purchase decisions. They bridge
consumers to different retailers. Potential buyers can
compare prices and reviews about different retailers and
complete purchases by necessarily being directed to
external websites. These social commerce websites make
profits by promoting the names of retailers and indicating
them as alternatives for purchasing, rather than from direct
sales activities. This includes all 13 of the other websites
studied.
Figure 2 – Truly Social Commerce Websites2
.
It is possible to foresee another category that may not appear
in the 15 websites we studied but can be found in several
current social commerce websites. This category refers to
aggregators of auctions and bids to accommodate collective
buying initiatives, such as Groupon (www.groupon.com) and
Living Social (www.livingsocial). Basically these websites
offer timed daily deals clustered by region/location.
Functioning as mirrors of promotions and discounts, these
initiatives benefit by getting a cut of the deal from the
advertised retailer. Meanwhile, consumers receive and/or
share those deals through social networks and can benefit
from the discounts if a certain number of buying transactions
is achieved. In this case, the purchase of coupons or tickets is
done through the website, but the product or service checkout
2
Retrieved March, 15 2011, from http://www.amisampath.com
is done directly with the retailer/firm. As none of the 15
website under investigation adopts this revenue model,
further empirical research would be required for a better
comprehension of this category and to develop a more
complete classification for social commerce websites.
It is also interesting to discover how some firms reposition
themselves in the social commerce market. Emerging in
2004 as a beta version of a visual bookmarking website,
Wists claims that members would benefit from having a
“universal shopping cart” based on their wish list to be
accessed from anywhere and shared with their friends. By
the middle of the year 2005, they adopt the social shopping
label to represent their business, which has been consistent
since then.
Longitudinal tracking of the 15 websites reveals that many
websites (e.g. Kaboodle, Reevoo, Wishpot, Osoyou and
Buzzillions) become available first as a beta version during
the initial months or in the first years of activity (with the
exception that when first appearing in 2006, Stylehive is an
alpha version in its logo). Such data are open for
interpretation, but they apparently reflect the experimental
stage of or their tentative entrance into the social commerce
market.
Most Common Practice: Trustworthy Social Content
To attest unbiased reviews seems to be a major concern of
some social commerce websites, especially the referral
ones. The slogan of Epinions in 2001 is: “Before you buy get
unbiased advice, discover the best product for you, find
the best place to buy it.” Reevoo’s homepage in 2005
highlights “Independent users, informed reviews the place
where you can find people like yourself talking about
products you’re thinking of buying.” Similarly, when
released in 2007, Crowdstorm has the announcement on its
homepage “impartial buying advice from a crowd of
trusted people.”
Using trust as a mechanism to strength members’ ties and
credibility perceptions of user-generated content (UGC), in
2007 Buzzillions introduces the “verified buyers” resource
to guarantee that buyers of a given product would be able to
write reviews about it, which turns out to be the basis for its
slogan: “Verified buyers. Millions of reviews. Meaningful
recommendations.”
Promotion tags, recommendations, wish lists, ratings and
reviews scores are the most adopted mechanisms for users
to share content and for firms to apply UGC management as
a business strategy. Tagging appears in 2005 in Wists and
Etsy. Starting in 2006, tagging becomes an essential
element in social commerce and is adopted by all websites
under analysis.
Complementary resources such as tag clouds and tag lists also
start to mushroom as alternative product locators and to
produce more visual search resources. According to our
observation, the first website to apply tag clouds is Epinions in
2006. In 2007, tag clouds start to be widely applied in the
interfaces of different social commerce websites such as
Amazon, Reevoo, and ThisNext. By 2008, tag clouds become
a basic and consistent feature among all the 15 websites.
To complement written comments and recommendations,
pictures and videos or podcasts provided by members start
to appear to produce a less frigid and unresponsive
environment for online shopping and for strengthening ties
between members. This video-based referral approach is
extensively adopted by ShopWiki in 2006 and becomes
more massively adopted by other websites such as Reevoo
and Stylehive in 2007. One year later, Buzzillions
implements a section called “reviewers in action” with
postings of pictures from reviewers with their recent
purchases.
In 2009, Reevoo releases one interesting service that
explicitly intents to maximize its profits from UGC, which
the website has been accumulating over the years. Reevoo
Insight is an information service that provides retailers and
manufactures predictions for the electrical industry based on
reports of market watching and on the website’s metrics. The
service is repaginated in 2010 and divided into two different
more focused, but associated, services offered to e-retailers:
Crowd Commerce and Rich Reviews.
Social Channels
As previously mentioned, this research considers social
channels as the internal tools and/or platforms which are
responsible for establishing communication among
consumers and for providing them an internal space to
socialize their opinions, perceptions and profiles.
With the exception of Wists, all the other 14 websites
provide internal environments. Fora, communities/groups
based on styles and preferences, chat rooms and personal
blogs are often encountered. There are variations in names;
for instance, Stylefeeder releases the “Tastemaker’s diary”
in 2008 as a way for consumers to post their acquisitions
and to compose new looks for good deals and opinions.
Some social channels are devoted to establish a direct
connection between consumers and experts or consumers
and idols/celebrities. Since 1999, Epinions offers the
network “Epinions experts” who are real buyers. In a
different direction, Amazon Connect starts to appear in 2006
as an entirely new channel of communication between
authors and readers. Users can interact with not only the
writers, but also other users interested in the same authors.
Similarly, Stylefeeder in 2007 and This Next (one year
later) adopt the approach of involving fashion designers and
fashion experts, bridging communication between members
and specialists.
Between 2007 and 2008, Shopstyle, Wists, Stylehive and
This Next start to incorporate a sort of internal social
network, not by using the same micro blogging function
offered by Twitter, but by applying the followers’
terminology.
Perceiving the need to keep a trustworthy environment for
members, all 15 websites present some recommendations for
community or group participation, service terms and
conditions or information policies3
for general use. In some
cases, reviews can be flagged when inappropriate.
Conversely, in others websites such as Kaboodle and
Buzzillions the idea of flagging is associated with the
positive idea of “spreading de word” and sharing.
By 2009 Stylehive invests in a complete internal platform
which resembles some of the main features of social
networks. In this platform, the website integrates several
functions such as member descriptions/profiles, pictures,
activity stats and histories, messages, wish lists, follower
members, and followed members, and communities/groups.
Participation in websites’ social channels often requires
direct free membership. In generally, the access to members’
pages/profiles, communities and groups are open to external
users. Only ShopWiki in its first year online (2006) restricts
access; still, some features could be detected from the
homepage.
External Social Networks and Bookmarking Services
All the examples of social networks and social
bookmarking services listed in Table 2 are encountered in
some of the 15 websites analyzed. We find even more
examples than those in the initial checklist.
Some examples of additional services are: Backflip,
Blogmarks, Faves, FeedMeLinks, FriendFeed, kIRTSY,
GoogleBuzz up, Link-a-Gogo, LinkedIn, Mister Wong,
Mixx, Multiply, Netvouz, Netvibes, Newsvine, Propeller,
Reddit, Segnalo, Simpy, Sk*rt, Spurl, Reddit, Tailrank,
Live Journal, Xanga, and Friendster. Presumably, Facebook
and Twitter are the most popular occurrences at websites’
interfaces.
Wish Pot introduces login via Facebook account in 2010
and the “like it” feature on the interface, providing linkage
to this social network. Kaboodle is the last adopter of social
networks, which incorporated Facebook, Stumble and
Twitter to its interface in 2009.
It is noteworthy that until 2010, six websites do not have
links to any external social networks or bookmarking
services through their interfaces: Amazon, Epinions, Etsy,
This Next, Osoyou and Crowdstorm. This might be an
option to preserve UGC internally and to provide the firm a
better control and management of it. However, from a
business perspective and user-oriented perspective this
more endogenous approach might incur some
consequences, which may represent a potential field to be
explored in the social commerce arena.
3
Only the existence or not were verified. No analysis of the content
was conducted.
Organizers and Management Tools
The most widely adopted organizer and management tool
among the 15 websites is Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
which provides users a history of updates of a given URL
without requiring access to the website. Its first registration
in the dataset is in 2004, and this tool maintains consistency
over the years.
Price and deal alerts, currency convertors, calendars, to-dolists,
shopping and navigation history are also found among
the websites. This Next and Etsy are innovative in applying
Geolocators in 2008, with the objective of demonstrating
the concentration of reviews closer to the user location. One
year later, Buzzillions adopts this tool with the same
purpose.
Several mechanisms to sort searches, results, reviews and
reviewers are found. In 2007, Buzzilions innovates the
“four-steps-locator,” a sequence of questions about
consumers’ preferences and profile, in order to refine
results and provide recommendations. In the same year,
Osoyou implements an image manager called "Drag and
drop hanger," a shopping tool that allows users to drag
items from different retailer’s web pages and compose a
virtual scrapbook to be shared as wish lists or kept for
records and further purchase purposes.
Mobile and Augmented Reality: Underexplored Features
Our analysis shows that only a few websites offer mobile
services until 2010. Amazon is a pioneer in this. In 2002 the
website announces a service for auctions alerts and website
contents through web-enabled cell phones, Palm VIIs or
Pocket PCs. Later, in 2008, Amazon Window Shop is
released as a more visual alternative service and to promote
an alternative display of products, and to facilitate
navigation through mobile devices.
Up to the last captures by WM in 2010, only two other
websites present mobile alternative sites. Wish Pot, starts in
2007 and Reevoo in 2008.
In the literature, Virtual Reality (VR) is often associated
with social commerce environments, due to the possibility
of simulating a real shopping experience (Ye, et al. 2005).
Ye et al. (2005) present a prototype for the design and
implementation of an online store through which the
communication between consumers and collaborative
shopping activities is established in a virtual shopping mall
environment. Multiple agents are able to search and
recommend products according to customers’ preferences.
Customers are able to choose and customize their avatars,
walk around the virtual environment, look over and
manipulate the products through a secure transaction
system.
In reality, though, our analysis shows that no related
features such as avatars, virtual visits to a store or virtual
fittings rooms are identified in the 15 social commerce
websites. Aware of the potentials of VR, some other online
stores4
have been developing or incorporating VR
technology provided by third parties to improve the user’s
experience. Specifically for apparel online stores, virtual
fitting rooms are applied to improve buyer decisions and
match expectations, and, as a consequence, to reduce the
costs associated with products’ returns.
Even though mobile applications and VR technologies are
not considered essential elements for social commerce
activities, there is no doubt that these are desirable features
for improving user experience. From a market vitality and
permanence standpoint, it is possible that in the future those
two categories will move to expected features.
Summary: A Social Commerce Timeline
To unify some of the key breakthroughs and features found
in the 15 websites during a timeline analysis of twelve years
(1999-2010), we present the finding summary in a visual
way in Figure 3. Specifically, the first appearance of a
feature or tool is depicted, along with the hosting
website(s). Collectively, Figure 3 shows the milestones of
technological features or tools that play an important role in
defining social commerce today.
Figure 3 – Social Commerce Evolution.
4
Macy’s is one example that implements this technology in 2010.
CONCLUSION
Before concluding the study, we need to realize its
limitations. The findings are bounded by two important
factors: the 15 social commerce websites selected for the
analysis, and the available captures by the Wayback
Machine.
This paper presents a longitudinal qualitative study of the
evolution of social commerce based on the analysis of 15
cases over a timeline of 12 years. The data obtained from a
systematic observation and analysis through WM captures
are fairly rich and allow us to detect some interesting facts
about the social commerce trajectory. The narration of these
factors and its visual representations not only provides a
better understanding of the collaborative online shopping
phenomenon, but also stimulates reflections on its current
stage and its future directions.
The exploratory nature of this research discloses some
potential topics to be further investigated. First, it would be
interesting to look at the rudimentary classification of social
commerce websites addressed by this paper and expand it
based on the analysis of a bigger number of social
commerce websites. Second, the maturity of social
commerce websites also might be an interesting aspect to
be analyzed. The beta and alpha versions data provided
some insights, but could not be supported by evidence from
WM. Third, comparative studies could be carried out to
investigate the reasons that lead companies to maintain
social activities restricted to internal tools and platforms or
to explore third party services as a possible theme to better
understand the mechanisms of social commerce.
Our study is one of the few empirical studies on social
commerce which depicts some interesting features of social
commerce that may be contrary to common wisdom or
understanding. The study contributes to the academic
literature on social commerce, which is still modest.
Furthermore, this research contributes directly to the area of
Information Science and Technology due to a common
interest in studying the environments and contexts in which
people, information and technology interact and interplay.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank Professor Chingning Wang (The
National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan) for her
cooperation in the literature review stage of this study. We
also acknowledge Fulbright/CAPES for sponsoring Renata
G. Curty during her PhD Program in the U.S.
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