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…..

Optimizing e-commerce UX: HFI Webinar on June 25th

For the e-commerce people…Visit Human Factors International to register for this webinar :

"Optimizing e-commerce UX: Create websites that empower customers, are effortless to use, and create a joyful shopping experience"

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
3:30 to 4:30pm ET (US)