Speed Summary | New JWT Report on Social Commerce [Download]

Hot on the heels of our own social commerce report, advertising giant JWT (also part of the WPP fold) has just published a social commerce report for brands and retailers, focusing on three key trends, three brand building objectives, two hurdles and five ‘things to watch’ that could shape the future of social commerce (download link).

The 35 page report, authored by Patricia Orsini, and published on the most excellent JWT Intelligence blog, is definitely worth a read, but here’s the speed summary – including some charts from the expert interviews and consumer surveys (UK (n = 412) and US = n = 559)) included in the report.

3 Key Social Commerce Trends

• Trend 1: F-Commerce (commerce on Facebook)  Bringing the Shop to the Consumer
  • Pop-Up Stores (Limited Time/Edition) (Pampers, Rachel Roy, D v. Furstenberg)
  • Digital Stores (Streaming, Downloads, Ticketing)
  • Campus Stores (Kembrel, B&N, Diane von Furstenberg)
  • [Factory] Stores (Express, ASOS)
• Trend 2: Overlaying the Social Graph Bringing the Social Graph to E-Commerce Sites (Amazon Recommendations, Levi’s Friends Store’, Rotten tomatoes, TrupAdvisor Trip Friends, Copious, eBay coming soon)
  • Facebook Developer Tools (Open Graph)
  • Hyper-Personlisation
  • FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
• Trend 3: ‘Socializing’ Brick and Mortar – Bringing the Social Graph In-Store (Diesel QR Likes, Macy’s Magic Fitting Room, Pepsi-Co Social Vending Machine)
  • SoLoMo technology mesh (Social, Local, Mobile)
  • ‘Phone a Friend‘ (get advice in-situ)
  • Web 3.0 – (harnessing smart technology & The Web of Things in-store)

3 Key Social Commerce Objectives

• Personalisation (more relevant, pertinent)
• Accessibility (make it easier to shop)
• Advocacy (harness word of mouth value)

5 Things to Watch

• Facebook Credits – they could just become a global Web currency
• The Social Graph Meets the Virtual Closet – smart social pick lists
• Interest Graphs – Google+ has this licked
• Walmart (Kosmix) – Has plans to do to social commerce, what Amazon did for e-commerce
• Shop and Share Apps – Curated pick lists from the field

2 Key Hurdles

• Privacy:  80% are still worried about privacy implications of shopping directly on Facebook
• Autonomy: 76% say they would prefer to discover products and brands themselves rather than get recommendations  (One key to smart social commerce may be smart and covert recommender systems that create the illusion that the consumer is discovering products themselves.  Hmm, interesting).

Charts