Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of a recent article from StorefrontBacktalk.com, a retail technology and E-Commerce blog, presented here for discussion.
The influence of social networking sites on e-commerce has been overblown and such sites have very little influence on purchases, according to a report from Jupiter Research.
"There has been a lot of talk about social shopping," said Patti Freeman Evans, the report's lead analyst, but that talk hasn't translated into sales.
"Social and community sites still rank low in shoppers' minds as useful places to research and shop for gifts," said Ms. Evans. "Only three percent of users who plan to buy online this holiday season - and six percent of those in the segment who are ages 18 to 34 - plan to add a wish list or gift list to their MySpace, Facebook, or similar website page to help their friends and family select gifts."
If we assume Jupiter's right, this has some fascinating potential ripples throughout e-commerce.
The assumption for years has been that as social networks grew, the collective wisdom of the group would influence huge areas of the members' lives, from clothing choices to dating advice to the kind of car they should drive. Therefore, the most powerful social networking sites would strongly drive purchases.
Before we completely abandon those beliefs, consider the possibility that the conventional wisdom may not necessarily contradict Jupiter's conclusion.
Even the best of surveys merely reveal what consumers say they believe they are influenced by. Even if they are being truthful, do consumers truly know what is influencing them?
Let's also broaden our practical definition of social networking. Amazon's consumer-posted product reviews are consistently cited as a strong influence on Amazon's sales. Wouldn't that be properly classified as social networking? It's messages from the collective community.
So, are Jupiter's survey results are a factor of context?
The Jupiter report supports the premise that people today don't go to those social sites with the objective of doing e-commerce research. But what if the next generation of search engines intelligently combed such sites, looking for product discussions and allowed those to appear near those products on Amazon, EBay or, for that matter, RiteAid.com? You'd then be marrying the social networking site advice with the context of a site designed for e-commerce.
There's also the susceptibility aspect of influence. Are consumers saying that they hear all of those product discussions at social networking sites, but either don't care or do not give it any credibility? Hence, they are literally not influenced by it.
If we look at the other big social e-commerce trend today - consumer-created videos - we see one common thread: credibility. Or, more precisely, the eternal search for credibility. The premise being that a large community of consumers will, by and large, police itself as these social mediums mature, and eventually give honest, truthful advice.
Amazon just announced that it has added videos for more than 450 of its top-selling holiday products. The initial videos look to be commercials - and cheap ones at that - but as the community gets involved, will the credibility improve? And will that boost influence?
That's the problem with consumers today. Just when e-tailers have them figured out, they go and do something surprising. Like show signs of having a brain stem.
Discussion question: How much influence do you think social networking sites have on purchases currently? In what ways do you see social networking sites influencing consumer purchasing decisions? How might that change in the future as these sites mature and gain credibility?