Social Commerce

What is Social Commerce? Social Commerce can mean different things depending on the expert you ask. Below are just a few examples:

• Wikipedia "Social Commerce: Subset of e-commerce in which the active participation of customers and their personal relationships are at the forefront"
• IBM "Social Comerce: The concept of word of mouth in the context of e-commerce"
• Jochen Krisch (ExcitingCommerce) "Social Commerce models are ecommerce models that focus on people instead of products"
• Jason Weaver (Shoutlet) "Social Commerce: Selling with social media"
• Lora Cecere (Altimeter group) "Social commerce is the use of social technologies to connect, listen, understand, and engage to improve the shopping experience"
• Dave Beisel (Venrock) "Social Commerce: Social input in online shopping services [that] augments the experience"
• Lee Raito (LeeRaito.com) "Social Commerce: A trusted environment where friends, family and acquaintances dynamically contribute content to the referral and sale of goods and services through positive and negative feedback, reviews, ratings and testimonials regarding their experiences past and present. In short, social commerce is a trusted environment of which prospective consumers make buying decisions based on the advice of a network of friends and family, not strangers they don't know or trust."

So how do we at Nichols & Associates define Social Commerce?

The use of social interactions to promote the purchases of products and services