E-Commerce 2007
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COMMUNITY DRIVEN COMMERCE: DESIGN OF AN INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR SOCIAL SHOPPING Research Group for Industrial Software supported by IFKT ABSTRACT The fast evolution of the internet has tremendously increased the variety of modern communication possibilities for people, offering new sources for social contacts via communities and networks. Likewise, there exists a steadily increasing demand for social e-commerce, an emerging phenomenon also called social shopping. Especially applicable for B2C and C2C e-commerce, social shopping is currently characterized by offering platforms where consumers collaborate online, get advice from trusted individuals, find the right products of a repository and finally purchase them. This paper illustrates an integrated framework for social shopping as basis for a new prototype system. For the design of the framework, conventional community and shopping systems as well as existing best practice social commerce models were analyzed in detail. The presented results highlight core entities, functions and interactions of the social shopping concept, summarized in a concise diagram. KEYWORDS Social Shopping, Community Driven Commerce, Framework 1. INTRODUCTION Social shopping is a specific approach of B2C and C2C e-commerce, where consumers collaborate and shop in an environment similar to social networking platforms (e.g., MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Orkut or Hi5). Using the synergistic experience of crowds, potential customers communicate and aggregate information about products, prices, and deals. Social shopping sites typically allow members to tag products they like, to upload personalized images, to write comments on goods as well as to create custom shopping lists to share them with friends. Future models of social commerce range from advertising and affiliate driven sites like ThisNext or Shoppero without direct sales activities to fully integrated social shopping sites like Threadless or Etsy where products are transferred from vendors to consumers (B2C) or directly between users (C2C). Another trend is that some of the prominent social networks like Facebook offer their platforms to third party applications. Thus, conventional vendors have access to a huge number of potential customers. There is still big room for innovation in this market, and social shopping models will change the way we will shop in future with a strong impact on consumers’ behavior. To take part in that evolution, the owners of existing traditional online shops and product vendors have to redesign their existing shopping platforms, to make them useable like a social network. The aim of this paper is to outline the design of an integrated framework to realize social shopping platforms. A critically important element for a successful implementation is to analyze thoroughly online shopping behavior and thus to understand how commerce platforms must perform to guarantee user satisfaction. 2. METHOD In the research field of community driven commerce, rather few current papers have been published yet. Social shopping frameworks, as a combination of conventional shopping platforms with community driven functionalities, therefore require the application of an explorative approach to define a catalogue of core entities, functions and interactions. The main entities (consumer, product, repository and vendor) have been determined through an extensive analysis of traditional online shopping systems. (Rahman and Bignall 2001; Koivumäki et al. 2002; Treese and Stewart 2002; Burt and Sparks 2003; Meng et al. 2004; Yang and Mamadou 2006) In addition sub-entities and general web community features have been considered. (Kim 2000; McLure Wasko and Faraj 2000; Bouras et al. 2004; Choi et al. 2004; O’Murchu et al. 2004; Zhang et al. 2006; Miyoshi et al. 2007) Beside the analysis of conventional communities and shopping systems, the case study research method (Yin 2003; Stake 1999) was used to analyze best practice social shopping models. Out of 100 evaluated future e-commerce models there were selected 17 relevant models to design the social shopping framework. The selected showcases were evaluated in detail to define all requirements for the process of design. Thus, three main categories have been identified: Collaborative shopping networks, B2C and finally C2C social shopping models. Collaborative shopping networks (e.g., thisnext.com, kaboodle.com, shoppero.com) have a strong community character and focus on a mixture of advertising and affiliate fees from retailers, as they do not sell products directly. B2C social shopping models (e.g., imagekind.com, threadless.com, zazzle.com) are characterized by additional product transactions between vendors and consumers. The community functions are mostly driven by members of the platform. C2C social shopping models (e.g., dawanda.com, istockphoto.com, etsy.com) offer users platforms for selling private articles. For that purpose the social shopping platform is used as a marketplace. Users promote their products, whereas most of the functions and workflows are driven by the community. Figure 1. Methodological approach to identify required entities and functions Figure 1 shows all relevant aspects identified for designing the presented framework. First, key functions were derived from detailed analyses of current conventional systems and existing best practice models to build a basis for future developments in this research field. 3. FRAMEWORK DESIGN The designed framework (Figure 2) integrates the main entities consumer, product, repository and vendor, corresponding to conventional shopping systems. Moreover, sub-entities like groups, tags, feeds, blogs or widgets were considered as well. Frequently, these entities are connected directly and thus interact permanently. The interaction traces show the complex interconnections, providing the basis for the identification of several functionalities characterized below. A consumer joins a social shopping platform due to campaigns, the invitation of a friend, a search result or a result of a price compare engine. This consumer can have a blog, several favorites or wish lists, which are shared with other community members. Users of a social shopping platform arrange themselves in different groups and find friends or other users with similar interests. All members of a group have the possibility to discuss on products, to tag products to highlight them, to write recommendations and comments on products as well as to create their own ranking lists to show others their preferred products. In B2C models consumers write comments and notes on products or in groups. In C2C models users can sell own articles on marketplace scenarios. Products are listed in categories, may feature descriptive tags, have a certain context and are assigned to a specific content, with attached information. A product can be part of a search result, can be marked as a favorite and may be annotated with comments or notes from community members. The repository of a B2C platform is derived from suppliers and sold from a vendor. On a C2C platform, products of users are sold. Products can be structured in different categories and described by specific content. Consumers can find the repository of a vendor in price compare engines. A vendor starts campaigns to acquire customers, to sell products, which are produced from suppliers or the vendor himself. All products of a vendor are part of his repository. He may keep a blog to inform consumers. Vendors are able to manage products over the backend and to start directed campaigns and other marketing activities based on users’ behavior. Figure 2. Integrated framework for social shopping The whole selling process should be seen as a continuous cycle. After buying a product the consumer will recommend it within the community, share information with other users, and perhaps they will put it on their wish list. On the other side the vendor can address buyers with marketing campaigns, and an integrated community allows a direct conversation to future potential customers. Main goal of a vendor must be to provide consumers a functional environment to make them permanent customers. (Lei and Xu Wang 2005) As a special feature, an internet connection with the system can be established via several interfaces. Thus, the framework can be opened for third party applications and communication with the global web sphere is possible. (Breslin 2005) For example, integrated Feeds which are driven by RSS or Atom can be tracked in real time, or interactive product lists can be included over widgets in every blog over the web. 4. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK In its final version the framework fits all requirements of a multifunctional social shopping platform and can be adopted for any shopping application or user driven community. The whole framework should not be regarded as a closed system, but is rather open to all third party applications like blogs, social networks or any authorized entity. In near future the presented framework will be realized by a prototype of a community driven commerce network. Next steps will be the detailed definition of use cases for every entity and the setup of an explorative test system. Based on this prototype, further understanding of these highly complex interactions will be gained by mass user tests and presented soon. REFERENCES Bouras, C. et al., 2004. A Web Based Virtual Community: Functionality and Architecture Issues. Proceedings of IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities 2004, Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 59-66.