Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Ecommerce

Social Ecommerce 1
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Advantages of Social E-Commerce.............................................................................................................2
Large audience........................................................................................................................................2
Increased frequency.................................................................................................................................3
Two way communication........................................................................................................................4
Effective targeting...................................................................................................................................4
Social Listening.......................................................................................................................................5
Disadvantages of Social E-Commerce.........................................................................................................5
Too frequent advertisements....................................................................................................................5
Expensive................................................................................................................................................6
Transparent..............................................................................................................................................6
Future of Social E-Commerce.....................................................................................................................6
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................7
References...................................................................................................................................................7

Social Ecommerce 2
Introduction
Social Ecommerce is a subset of Ecommerce that involves the use of social media platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat. Social media is increasingly being used by
organizations to target their customer segments. Social media platforms have widely collaborated
with leading organizations in order to target customers through these platforms. This strategic
collaboration allows businesses to reach out to a large audience in an effective manner (Tuten &
Solomon, 2017). This report throws light upon various advantages and disadvantages of social
ecommerce.
Social Ecommerce term was first coined by Yahoo in 2005. Since then, the utility and
effectiveness of the process has improved over time. The changing lifestyles and increasing use
of social media depicts a bright future for social ecommerce.
Advantages of Social E-Commerce
Since its inception, social ecommerce has largely benefitted industries by enhancing sales
through effective customer targeting. There are various advantages of social ecommerce that
have made one of the most important source of sales for the firms. Few advantages of social
ecommerce are as below:
Large audience
It is uncommon to find someone who does not has a Facebook or an Instagram account. Social
media has enveloped people across all age groups, income classes, religions and geographical
areas (Hollensen & Raman, 2014). Social media has enabled people from different cultural
backgrounds to garner the same information in their local languages. Therefore the largest
advantage of social ecommerce lies with the large amount of population that can be targeted
through social media. 2017 saw a total of 3.1 billion users. This number is estimated to reach
5.24 billion by 2021 (Statista, 2017). The picture below depicts that social media penetration is
about 42% while penetration of unique mobile phone users within the total population is 68%.
Active mobile social users form 39% of the total population. Such large number of social media
users make it easier for organizations to target millions of customers through a single platform.