Chapter 8: Social Commerce

Personally, I don’t really like physical shopping much because it makes me tired. I don’t like dealing with too many people or trying on many clothes. Therefore, I do prefer online shopping more since I can compare price and ship wherever I want. Also, many websites offers free shipping and return. However, recently, I had a bad experience with Amazon.com. I bought cell phone cases and they were shipped to my old address. Regardless what I tried to tell the seller, they just didn’t response and brushed off saying it was my fault that I provided a wrong address, which I hadn’t lived there for 9 years.  In addition, I tried to contact UPS and USPS to change the address. Needless to say, my effort went in vein causing me more stress and vowed not to use their service in the future (unless I have to). As a result, I had to reorder my cell phone cases. I have learned that some businesses do not want a repeat customer or a good word-of-mouth. Through this bad experience, I realized that not every business knows how to conduct an online business. All they want is a transaction. I guess they think America has huge population, so losing one or hundreds will not affect their businesses. So, I waited for one pay back I had which is customer review. Guess what, that request never come.  I went online trying to find the way to give them my review. Again, my effort was not successful.  Well, I think they knew what my review would be like. Anyway, because of one bad experience, I have become more concise when buy online.  Also, I will remember to tell my students about my experience in years to come.

Most of the time, people who have bad experience tend to give review or feedback more than those who have good experience. As the social commerce progress, I expect that people will review, rate, refer, and share they experience more. I wonder whether you have any good or bad experience with online shopping. Do you give any review when shop online?

Let get back to work, below are questions for your blog for Chapter 8:

• Please summarize main ideas of the chapter.
• Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the chapter.
• Have you ever shop through the ads on social media? Why? Why not?
• While online shopping offers many benefits, do you prefer to shop online or physical shopping? Why?
• Which is more influential to you between reviews from experts or reviews form customers? Explain.
• Review the list of social shopping applications presented in the chapter and visit some of the sites that use these applications. Social shopping applications provide functionality for customers such as enhanced organization, price comparisons, risk reduction, and access to product information, but they also make the shopping experience more fun. Tag the list of applications based on the benefit the application provides – utility or fun. Which aspect of social shopping is most important to shoppers, in your opinion?