Organizations perceive eCommerce as a mechanism to reach their stakeholders directly. In this way, it facilitates the success of the transaction from anywhere in the world. On this basis, it is evident that, in order to reach their stakeholders, they must orient their strategies towards the inclusion of the community based on the participation and interaction that is generated with the organization on social media. JD Duarte, an entrepreneur and business expert from Costa Rica, explains how eCommerce has become social commerce.
eCommerce has gone beyond the simple fact of marketing on the Internet and has advanced to s-commerce or social commerce. This is a horizon that includes the community and the user as participants in the processes related to marketing through social networks.
Today, eCommerce is a strategy that organizations use to reach more customers. However, it is detected that this mechanism is still far from being extensive to many sectors. There is still a need to improve knowledge and socialize the advantages that this marketing strategy brings, and advance to s-commerce as a mechanism that allows the customer to feel involved in the production processes and services in companies. This can be accomplished through the communities that are created in social media and that favor consumer inclusion as the main axis.
The social web is a platform that allows interaction between Internet users promoting assertive communication. Among its advantages, there is the ease for the user to access directly to consume from anywhere.
“One of the benefits offered by the social web to organizations,” asserts Duarte, “is its contribution to the improvement in terms of the image it promotes through the network. In turn, it facilitates the optimization of strategies to keep the consumer loyal through the service and their participation in the transaction with their inclusion in social media or Internet social media.”
In addition, through the virtual relationships that are generated, the time of the users is optimized. Many organizations prefer to be outside these organizational trends, because they are prevented by the consequences of being included due to the popularization of social media as playful spaces, so they do not know their great potential as information systems that facilitate an efficient transactions.
Social media creates content and seeks to establish the guidelines of the products or services they consume in a personalized way. Such is the case of social networks, blogs, wikis and more, These bring together communities around a common theme. In fact, the Alexa web traffic measurement ranking highlights within the top ten most popular social media in the world Facebook, YouTube, Baidu, Wikipedia and Twitter, which corroborates the previous assertion.
Adds Duarte, “Social technologies have contributed to the advent of different strategies for organizations. These are aimed at optimizing resources and seek to become novel mechanisms to promote more efficient processes, as is the case of eCommerce.”
The marketing of products is not a new practice, as it has always existed. The current difference lies in the way in which this process develops. In fact, eCommerce continues its development as a strategy with the use of social media to become s-commerce. In this context, the social tools of the Internet – blogs, social networks, wikis, and others – contribute to the development of electronic commerce by orienting themselves towards social commerce to the extent that they consider the user interaction with the community and the transaction.
In this way, they allow effective communication to be generated between these communities. Through these online conversations, the personalization of products and services is promoted for the client and their community.