Alarming data?
Traffic trends of six social shopping platforms: Kaboodle, Stylehive, Snooth, WAYN, Fab, Polyvore.
Data extracted from http://siteanalytics.compete.com early April 2012.
The value of social sharing and social proofing
Getting good deals-being proud-sharing with friends-reading friends sharing-learning about friends-discovering products and reasons for sharing-getting deals-resharing … … … … … …Yes, it looks like a virtuous circle to me.
See the excellent social shopping infographic by Sociable Labs.
Some preliminary empirical results
Here is a little update about my PhD thesis work! As a reminder, my doctoral research investigates a phenomenon at the juncture of online social networking and online shopping.
Online social networks have become pervasive. For example, Nielsen reported that Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs[1], and Facebook, the leading social networking site, has now more than 700 million active users[2]. In the meantime, online shopping remains a growing trend, with 60% of North-American consumers shopping online monthly in 2010 compared to 33% in 2007 [3]. When merged together, online social networks and online shopping yield online social shopping networks (OSSNs), i.e., digital platforms used by consumers to engage with each other and with products, brands, or places.
Motivated by the growing importance of this new phenomenon and the limited research on it to date, my doctoral thesis will attempt to develop, assess, and extent a theory explaining the nature and origin of the value individual users derive from OSSNs,
Hence, this summer, I started collecting some data for my thesis’ first empirical study. In this study, I start by asking the following questions:
For which purposes (i.e., for conducting which actions), how (i.e., via the support of which functions), and why (i.e., for which benefits) do people use online social shopping networks (OSSNs)?
To answer these questions, I surveyed some users of OSSNs (such as Yelp, Kaboodle, Foursquare), incorporating open and close-ended questions in the questionnaires, and following a ‘laddering’ approach where I probed respondents about (1) the purposes for which they use their preferred OSSN, (2) asked upward questions about the reasons for which the purposes are important to them and (3) asked downward questions about which functions are most useful in enabling these purposes.
- Laddering approach used
This pilot study generated 36 usable questionnaires. After coding the open-ended responses and creating so-called ‘implication’ matrices representing the strength of users’ cognitive associations between use and value (upward), and between use and functions (downward), I obtained the results shown in the Figure presented below. They provide preliminary insights into the nature and origin of the value individuals gain when using an OSSN. To be continued… 🙂
Hierarchical Value Map
- The central ‘bubbles’ represent four use modes, i.e., the four key ways of using an OSSN (for learning about products, for asking others’ opinions about products, for sharing content with others, for bonding with others) that could be selected by respondents.
- Upward arrows represent the instrumentality of the use modes for generating benefits (open-ended).
- Downward arrows represent the instrumentality of functions (close-ended) for engaging in the four use modes.
[1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/
Social Shopping Panel @ INTRACOM2011 (Part I)
Last Wednesday, I had the chance to participate to a panel covering the topic of online social shopping at the INTRACOM conference in Montreal. This conference addresses the theme of interactive communications in organizations and more generally, I would say, the smart use of technologies (a great topic :)) and the challenges related to them.
[INTRACOM was a very fun conference and I take the opportunity in this post to thank the conference committee for inviting me to come from Vancouver to participate to this panel. Many many thanks! It is always a true pleasure to visit Mtl and catch up with the Web community :).]
The social shopping panel was composed of the following members.
–FX Delemotte, Director of Communications and Marketing for Québec, at MEC
–Sébastien Provencher, cofounder of Needium/Praized Media.
–Yasha Sekhavat, Director of mobile applications at Yellow Pages.
-me 🙂
…and animated with dexterity and passion by Sandrine Prom Tep, User experience consultant and PhD Candidate in Marketing at the RBC Chair of eCommerce at HEC Montréal.
Because there was SOOOO MUCH to talk about during 1.5 hours, I would like to elaborate some of the points discussed and provide some food for further thoughts. My co-panelists had really interesting practical experiences to share…and I am sure Sandrine will synthesize her take on the gist of their contributions on her blog ;).
About the meaning of social shopping
-I don’t think that there is not one sole true definition of the phenomenon…but this does not prevent us from trying to identify what it is all about and scope the whole idea :). I presented to our panel’s audience three definitions of social shopping. These are interesting because they imply slightly different perspectives, and therefore different business/marketing actions. Let’s have a look:
- Definition 1 (a bit short-sighted)- The use of social technologies to optimize retail…. Clear and easy to grasp + retailer focused….but, but, but.. is social shopping really about a retailer focus?? …..where are our consumers in all that?
- Definition 2 (interesting!=…) – Helping consumers buy where they connect and connect where they buy…This makes the double sided intersection of consuming (could be on or off-line!) and connecting sharp clear! …I like it although it stays at bit abstract.
- Definition 3 (…we are getting there!) – The use of social technologies to anticipate, personalize, and energize shopping experiences….This is my favorite one because of the following:
- Anticipate implies the idea of ‘listening’ to consumers
- Personalize conveys the idea of (content) relevance, an important component of social shopping, and
- Energize means that the social shopping practice has the potential to be a driving force for crafting compelling and innovative products and services.
Another way to help define the phenomenon could be to look at the variety of models that currently exist. But there are so many of them! At a more fundamental level, and again, with the aim of stimulating our audience’s thinking, I propose to think about the nature of the social interaction(s) that is/are ‘designed’ or that you wish to design into an online commercial environment. More specifically, three properties come into my mind when thinking about the nature of online social interactions : (i) how explicit they are, (ii) how intimate they are, and (iii) their scope and related objective(s).
- How explicit are the social interactions on your existing or desired platforms?
Social interactions can be understood in terms of influencing or being influenced by others. In that view, reading a product review written by a consumer that I do not know at all is considered a social interaction, but a passive rather than active one! This perspective makes product evaluations/reviews sites part of social shopping. At the opposite of this ‘explicity’ continuum, we find models such as collaborative shopping where two friends share a common screen to navigate and choose products together (and in that case, social interactions are clearly active). …Note that answering this question has important implications for design given that creating active social interactions would require the design of rich/synchronous interactive environments.
- How intimate do you wish the social interactions between your consumers to be?
Do you want shoppers to interact with their close friends? Do you want them to interact with a wider community of other shoppers with similar interests? Do you want the relations between consumers to be ‘formalized’ (such as in an online social shopping ‘network e.g., Kaboodle) Do you want the interactions to be ‘private’ or fully transparent to anyone? The answer to these questions should be driven by your business and value objectives and have naturally important design implications as well.
- What is the ‘function‘ of these social interactions?
That is, what is the objective behind letting shoppers interact with each other? Do you want to provide specific decisions support (e.g., provide ways to ask other to vote for the choice of a particular product)? Do you want to help them explore and discover products through other folks? Do you want consumers to create, share and interact around things such as styleboards and blogzines to support their ‘shopper socialization’ and ‘identity’ needs?
to be continued (…) –> The experiential side: supporting social/emotional/needs…..
Let’s “social-technograph” our target customers!
A very practical interactive tool from Forrester Research: analyze a population (your target customers) “social technograhics” profile according to AGE group, GENDER, and COUNTRY. In brief, you’ll get a classification of people according to how they use social technologies (how active in the “critic” domain is my target population? how do men differ from women? etc.)
Unfortunately, WordPress is giving me trouble embedding the tool (iframe), so you need to visit the Groundswell blog to use it! You’ll get there other useful information such as data source, etc..
Embodying values in the design of ICTs
When it comes to designing technological tools, we often think of functional affordances / requirements / constraints / or tradeoffs, but very rarely do we explicitly refer to symbolic and value-oriented affordances or expressions.
In Human-Computer Interaction research, the closest idea I have found is that of a design rationale, i.e., a grouping of reasons for justifying decisions that are made in the design process. But design rationales tend to take the form of reasons supporting once again functional requirements exclusively, leaving aside the question of value.
In Information Systems research, we have had the closely related ideas IT artifacts’ spirit (the technology’s overall goal, as it is presented to users) or symbolic expressions (the communicative possibilities of a technical object for a specified user group), but they were not presented as part of an intentional design aspect.
Happily, I have found more on value-driven design in the philosophy of technology and dual nature of artifacts domain. Of high interest and as an illustration in the game design domain, I ran into the Value@Play project from researchers at NYU. This project is about understanding “how designers can be more intentional about the ways in which they integrate human values into their game-based systems.” Have a look at the short video capsules of game designers interviews, they provide a nice flavour or interesting design-related aspects such as the expression of values in games, layers of values, user-driven values, or the consciousness of designing to convey specific values.
We seem to be at the beginning of thinking of IT design with values (such as justice, autonomy, trust, comfort, friendship, sociality, participation) in mind. But isn’t it an exciting path worth of exploration for research and practice?
User Resistance @ HICSS
In a track about theoretical approaches to the study of information systems, Suzanne Rivard and Liette Lapointe talked about user resistance. They propose a theory for explaining and predicting implementers’ actions to ‘control‘ user resistance to a new information system (IS) implementation. Grounding their work the General System Theory (sometimes referred to as a cybernetics or self-regulation approach) where negative feedback enables a system to self-control and stabilize while positive feedback tends to lead to system instability, they argue that in the IS domain, implementers can take remedial reactions (e.g., training) to keep user resistance within an acceptable range (a negative feedback effect). On the contrary, antagonistic reactions (e.g., authority) of exerting no reaction will have a positive feedback effect, hence enhancing the level of user resistance, which will likely lead to organizational disruption, and eventually, to the abandonment of the IS implementation.
Interruptions Resulting from Using IT @ HICSS
Shamel Addas and Alain Pinsonneault write about IT use and interruptions that break the continuity of knowledge work in groups: they propose that interruptions resulting from using IT can lead to both positive and negative effects on knowledge integration.
The first type of interruption (intrusion) increases group workload and ultimately inhibits knowledge integration while the second one (feedback interventions) enhances collective mind by providing new information that is directly relevant to completing the primary task, which is a process that is beneficial to knowledge integration. The two channels identified here are essential because knowledge integration has been know to be an essential driver of new product development performance.
Challenge in Information Systems use @ HICSS
Pamela Schmidt on the role of challenge on information system (IS) use: she shows in an experimental study that allowing users to regulate the extent of assistance (hence challenge) they receive when using an interface enhances the users’ level of cognitive absorption, a desired intermediary state usually leading users to form intentions to use or reuse a particular system.
While challenge has long been known to be essential to the design of hedonic IT, for example in the gaming industry, an argument developed in this paper is that challenge is also essential in utilitarian IT such as en enterprise resource planing (ERP) system. And therefore, that the design of utilitarian IT can be informed by the insights from hedonic IT.
Pear to Pear 