The advantage and opportunity of social e-commerce is beyond a transaction. We can, and should create tools of social influence, but that influence should go both ways.

The benefit might not always be a transaction. Whether a consumer shops or not - (s)he provides feedback (about a brand, store, etc). The real opportunity here is to listen to that feedback and take it seriously. Find a way to aggregate these messages and make them surface during a business decision making. Sears has 1.9 stars on a 5-star scale (according to a resource provided by our social media product manager). Those individuals complain publicly about specific things.

Remember an MP3 player, called Zune? It was killed by social media. In this case the quality of the product or features were irrelevant. The problem is that, right or wrong, the public has voiced their opinion in such a way that it proved detrimental to the commercial failure of this product. The consumer did not want it.

With social media, there is no excuse for not having a good consumer relationship. Not listening to your consumer translates into a business loss over time. The word on the street spreads quickly, and glossy advertising, or a slew of features won’t fix the problem anymore.

Also, shopping behavior is changing. It is not a linear, straight forward process anymore. Few companies in the market understand that and cater to these needs. With online customers finding the product is one thing, and it’s just the beginning. Since everybody knows that with a few keystrokes I can virtually travel from one store to the other, and compare the prices for the chosen product. Further, I can (and I do) narrow down to two, or three retailers who offer me the best deal on shipping and fastest, most reliable delivery. More, and more consumers are interested in the reputation of the retailer (store rating) and it’s customer service just as they are interested in the quality of the product.

An European version of a Marketplace website (skapiec.pl), offers product browsing and at the same time displays a price map for a particular product, its ratings, and all the stores that sell it, with an overview of the price range and retailer ratings. The shopper can click on the store name (s)he is interested in and read the comments. A negative comment triggers an alarm to the retailer and in most cases there is a response posted. As a consumer, I understand there will always be some percentage of unhappy customers, but seeing that the company cares and responds is reassuring and wins me over.

Bottom line is – I can get the product anywhere, the online retailers have to compete on many fronts.