Social Retailing!!!

Social Retailing is the buzz word in the Retail Industry. It’s an opportunity for Retailers to reach, attract and retain younger audience i.e. 17 to 25 year old customers who seeks community attention. It aims at providing social tools and platform around product and services to create better informed and better organized buying behavior. It’s an attempt to link social networking and shopping. Social networking is popular on the Web. So is shopping. Imagine, then, the potential of Net shops that combine the two into a package called “social shopping.”

The concept of Social Retailing was first unveiled at National Retail Federation’s (NRF) BIG show in 2007 when IconNicholson launched Interactive Mirror. The interactive mirror provides on the spot feedback and ambient aura animation while beaming the customers’ in-store experience across the Web via live video feed. Friends on the Web can send messages and clothing suggestion to the customers. Customers can also try on outfits virtually using the mirror that shows how fab they might look – or not.

Simply speaking, when a customer stands in front of the mirror, a camera relays live video image of him/her to an Internet site where online participants could view his/her outfit. When Web viewers respond by sending him/her comments, their instant messages popped up on the left side of the mirror for the customer to read. They also select items for him/her to try on, causing virtual images of the clothing to appear before him/her in the middle of the mirror.

So, you could be in a department store and have your friends online at the same time helping you shop.

Another instance of Social Retailing is what online sites like kaboodle.com are doing. They are trying to promoting the idea of shopping online with your friends. They give you feeds related to you and your friend’s activities like:

• Adding items to the cart.
• Commenting on items.
• Creating polls.
• Updating your user profile.
• Starting a group.
• Adding new friends.
• Rating items.

Their main idea is to facilitate the following among their customers:

• Discover new things from people with similar taste and style
• Recommend and discuss your favorite products and stores
• Simplify your life with wish lists and shopping lists

Gartner’s View:

Traditionally e-commerce sites have concentrated on catering to individual shoppers- what the research firm Gartner calls the “solo hunter.” Today’s shopper according to Gartner is a “social gatherer”. They are looking for more interaction with people when they shop.

I want to know about more existing and innovative social retailing tools.

- Rajeev Damani 

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