Tag: mobile shopping

Social commerce is a relatively new subset of e-commerce that has emerged due to the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets. The term refers to the use of social networks in the context of e-commerce activity, leveraging the social power of these networks to make commerce more interactive and dynamic. The term itself was introduced by Yahoo! in November of 2005 to identify a collection of e-commerce tools that had features that allowed users to share information with one another.

Social commerce today incorporates the use of social media tools and content in order to facilitate e-commerce. This type of commercial has become particularly common within the fashion industry, where people like to share the products that they find with one another on a regular basis. The commerce platforms that leverage social connectivity are able to sell these products quite quickly. This connectivity is one of the most alluring features of social commerce.

Many people tend to enjoy social commerce because it allows them to interact with their friends and families while shopping. This social aspect can have a major affect on whether or not someone will purchase a particular product. Being able to quickly access opinions from a potentially large group of consumers can help people find out more about particular products and whether or not these products are worth anything.

Businesses have shown interest in social commerce as well, as it exists as a dynamic way to engage consumers effectively. Mobile consumers have proven themselves to be particularly difficult to engage for any prolonged period of time. These people tend to spend a lot of time on social networks, however, which social commerce an effective way to engage these consumers.

Amazon introduces new service that may be attractive to mobile consumers

Amazon may soon become serious competition for PayPal as the company begins to manage subscription payments for startups and small companies. Amazon is growing bolder in its e-commerce efforts and the company is hoping to capture the support of the mobile audience with its new ventures. The company has launched a new service that will allow its 240 million active users to use their financial information stored on Amazon.com to pay their bills online and manage their subscriptions.

PayPal may soon see some serious competition come from Amazon

For years, PayPal has been the leader in this sector, allowing consumers to pay for subscriptions and other services in a convenient fashion, using whatever financial information they have opted to store on PayPal. Amazon has slowly been entering into this field, hoping to meet the growing demand coming from consumers regarding more diversity in the payment services that they use on a regular basis. Amazon’s growing focus on mobile commerce is likely to help its new service win support with mobile consumers.

New service could be a hit with the mobile crowd

Amazon has been testing its new service over the past several months, working with startups and merchants that are interested in connecting with mobile and digital consumers. Those that opted to manage their subscriptions and services through Amazon were likely to spend more money on the products that they favored. In some cases, those using the service spent 30% more on the brands that used the service offered by Amazon.

Competition in the mobile space is growing more aggressive

Engaging mobile consumers has become a major priority for many business sectors. Retailers are working to become more mobile-centric and other businesses are trying to incorporate services that are valuable to the mobile crowd. This has been challenging, however, due to the extremely high amount of competition that exists in the mobile commerce space. Companies like Amazon and PayPal were able to establish a strong foothold in the mobile space early on, but their ability to compete with one another is subject to the whims of consumers.