Social commerce is way quite just selling to customers via social media channels. Consumer buying behavior has undergone lots of changes within the last year, influenced mostly by the pandemic situation and being forced to be confined to one’s homes.
This unknown situation has seen the extreme rise of social commerce. According to Grand View Research, the world social commerce market is projected to hit $3,369.8 billion by 2028. The report further states that the world social commerce market will grow at a CAGR of 28.4 percent between 2021 and 2028.
How well are brands and retailers adapting to those rapid changes? Adgully’s premier property – #GullyChat – in its latest episode on August 27, 2021, turned the attention on ‘Rise of Community Marketplaces – Social Meets Commerce’, wherein Founder & CEO of SHEROES Sairee Chahal decoded and analyzed this growing field in Friday’s Twitter chat.
Clarifying the concept of community marketplace, Sairee Chahal unfolded, “A society may be a group of individuals who are connected by a regular purpose or interest. A community marketplace is where buyers and sellers are connected via content or conversations and therefore the social capital of buyers and sellers is reference-able.”
Chahal noted that some examples include: Poshmark, Little Red Book – also referred to as Xiaohongshu in China, and more recently our community marketplace @SHOPonSHEROES on the #SHEROES app. Highlighting the challenges faced by marketplaces, Chahal noted Marketplaces or all commerce must solve for – Demand, supply, retention, and engagement – over the years the demand and provide playbooks got stronger, but retention and engagement still be large gaps.
She further said Trust is that the biggest enabler and content-led engagement helps fix the gap. Build trust within the system, users must trust your platform and every other. We see this play out beautifully now on @SHOPonSHEROES, where women buy and sell through connections created on #SHEROES. Chahal found out In a community marketplace, every buyer could be a potential seller and the other way around. the foremost important thing is to forge connection and trust.
Talking about the post-pandemic period for social commerce, Chahal noted Digital payment, e-commerce adoption, video, the increase of D2C brands and content-led buyer discovery are the most important contributors. According to her Post-pandemic India is leading the #socialcommerce landscape in Asia, which is projected to be a $100 billion market by 2025.
Women are the fastest-growing section today and can be massive operators of commerce within the next 2-5 years. Social commerce is inherently driven by women; we are seeing offline behaviors coming online. At @SHOPonSHEROES, we’ve got seen over 2,000 shops by women within weeks of launch Chahal informed.
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