Comments on: Market Research in the Age of Social Media http://www.ideacouture.com/blog/2009/08/13/market-research-in-the-age-of-social-media/ Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:22:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Nael El Shawwa http://www.ideacouture.com/blog/2009/08/13/market-research-in-the-age-of-social-media/comment-page-1/#comment-135 Nael El Shawwa Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:07:36 +0000 http://ideacouture.com/blog/?p=2001#comment-135 Great post Patrick. I think its rather tricky to measure the impact of social media interactions on e-commerce and how they contribute to the bottom line. The impact on sales at brick and mortar stores is even more tricky. The contribution definitely exists though but the connection seems blurry at least to me just because most of the time there may be a lag between when the interaction occurred and when the sale happened. At this stage what the social web is still missing is your global identity - one that travels around with you from one site to the other. There are promising movements today such as OpenID, OpenSocial, Google Profile, etc. but these are still in their early days and have not reached mass adoption. Now all of this comes with privacy concerns, but maybe some people would opt in for a more open web (i.e. less privacy) in return for a more relevant experience. An example would be Amazon's book suggestion list getting driven off your tweets, facebook profile, followers, friends, etc. For example if I am following an author on Twitter, there is a good chance that I would buy a book by them if it were suggested by Amazon. After this global identity is in place, the next piece in the puzzle is a widget that would tie all these separate events together in the case of the author/amazon example: - Someone I am following republishes a post from the author - I see it, and the read the blog post from that author - I find it interesting and follow that author - Now next time Amazon e-mails an offer, they can add a book or 2 from that author in their email blast. The fact that I followed him serves as a green light for this event. - If I do purchase the book, then we can quantify the value of social media on sales. For the brick and mortar sales, maybe this global identity would live on your cell phone? But now you get into another level of privacy concerns. At least two challenges of this: - how to get online sales channels to adopt this - how to avoid freaking out users - big brother kind of thing. How to convince them that a little less privacy can mean a lot more relevant online experience? Eventually the web will get to this point, maybe in another 5 years at least for e-commerce because in the end not doing this is literally leaving a lot of money on the table. Great post Patrick. I think its rather tricky to measure the impact of social media interactions on e-commerce and how they contribute to the bottom line. The impact on sales at brick and mortar stores is even more tricky. The contribution definitely exists though but the connection seems blurry at least to me just because most of the time there may be a lag between when the interaction occurred and when the sale happened.

At this stage what the social web is still missing is your global identity – one that travels around with you from one site to the other. There are promising movements today such as OpenID, OpenSocial, Google Profile, etc. but these are still in their early days and have not reached mass adoption. Now all of this comes with privacy concerns, but maybe some people would opt in for a more open web (i.e. less privacy) in return for a more relevant experience. An example would be Amazon’s book suggestion list getting driven off your tweets, facebook profile, followers, friends, etc. For example if I am following an author on Twitter, there is a good chance that I would buy a book by them if it were suggested by Amazon.

After this global identity is in place, the next piece in the puzzle is a widget that would tie all these separate events together in the case of the author/amazon example:
- Someone I am following republishes a post from the author
- I see it, and the read the blog post from that author
- I find it interesting and follow that author
- Now next time Amazon e-mails an offer, they can add a book or 2 from that author in their email blast. The fact that I followed him serves as a green light for this event.
- If I do purchase the book, then we can quantify the value of social media on sales.

For the brick and mortar sales, maybe this global identity would live on your cell phone? But now you get into another level of privacy concerns.

At least two challenges of this:
- how to get online sales channels to adopt this
- how to avoid freaking out users – big brother kind of thing. How to convince them that a little less privacy can mean a lot more relevant online experience?

Eventually the web will get to this point, maybe in another 5 years at least for e-commerce because in the end not doing this is literally leaving a lot of money on the table.

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