Social shopping

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social shopping is a method of e-commerce and of traditional shopping with integrates e-commerce in which consumers shop in a social networking environment similar to MySpace. Using the wisdom of crowds, users communicate and aggregate information about products, prices, and deals. Many sites allow users to create custom shopping lists and share them with friends.[1]. Some services even allow users to shop together synchronously to complete the social environment Social shopping sites can generate revenue not only from advertising and click throughs, but also by sharing information about their users with retailers.

Social shopping can also exist in the real-world. For example, when you walk into a dressing room, the mirror reflects your image, but you also see images of the apparel item and celebrities wearing it on an interactive display. A webcam also projects an image of the consumer wearing the item on the website for everyone to see. This creates an interaction between the consumers inside the store and their social network outside the store. The technology behind this system uses RFID[2].

Examples of social shopping sites include Pronto, StyleHive, ThisNext, Rasba and Kaboodle.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Like Shopping? Social Networking? Try Social Shopping - New York Times
  2. ^ Social Shopping in a Fully Enabled RFID Store, RFID Radio

[edit] Further reading