Social commerce: Is the next big thing?

Referring to what Wags' comment in my first blog, he wrote an interesting point that directly caught my attention. To be precise, he wrote that social commerce is somewhat a new trend in social media marketing. Then, one question suddenly popped up in my mind, in what extent social commerce considered as a new trend?  I suppose Giant retailers such as ZARA, Topshop, Nudie Jeans have their own Facebook page since maybe 5 years ago? and they have been using it to communicate constantly with their customers as well as promoting their products. They might not sell directly their products through Facebook or other social media platforms but at least they have been using social media to promote their own product. Hence, one question arises here, Are promotions through social media considered as social commerce?

                       

Well, looking to definition from Wikipedia, social commerce defined as the use of social networks in the context of e-commerce transactions. Transaction is the keyword here and I can assume that social commerce must involve transactions activity between the retailers and consumers, therefore promotion only is not sufficient enough to be considered as social commerce but, who cares? In my opinion, promoting your products through social media is one of the cheapest way to reach the consumers, especially for small businesses, right? 

To be honest, I am also using social media (Facebook) to promote my clothing line. My clothing line is named Velvia and, using Facebook as a medium of promotion was very helpful for me to reach consumers on a wide scale. But then, some consumers started complaining that they were not really comfortable to communicate through Facebook and eventually my sales were going down as well. To overcome this, me and my partners provide a particular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) services so that we can communicate directly with them. In line with my past problem, research that has been conducted by Forrester Research says that eBusiness in retail sectors have reported that they only had little direct or indirect benefit from Facebook, full article can be read here.

So, from my past experiences and research conducted by Forrester, do you think social commerce is still the next big thing in the future? Leave your thoughts here. In the end, I provide with a video that shows the prediction of social commerce in the future.

                             

                                           
Cheers,
Ivan