There’s a useful post over at econsultancy by Eric Abensur of cloud-based commerce company Venda, that asks a simple, but very pertinent question, is social commerce worth the investment?

The short answer – according to the post – is a qualified yes, if retailers adopt the right approach and tone.

For the e-consultancy post, social commerce is not about turning social media into a marketplace, but using social media to promote the marketplace/site you’re selling on – essentially through social sharing. For instance, Etsy sellers use Pinterest for free advertising, and 20% of buyers come to the craft marketplace from seeing shared pics on Pinterest.  Use e-commerce software to sell, and social software to share. Simple, right?

But is that it? Is social commerce really just regular e-commerce with social sharing added in?  Well it’s certainly part of it.  Social commerce software solutions with traction - TurnTo, 8thBridge, AddShoppers, inSparq, Bazaarvoice, Lithium, Sellaround – are all increasingly focusing on adding premium social features to e-commerce solutions – with ratings and reviews, Social Q&A, social recommendations, and customizable share buttons leading the pack. This is social commerce as a plugin, or rather, a set of plugins – and yes, it is worth the investment.  Why? Because these social plugins for e-commerce sites are simple, time and cost-efficient ways to help retailers monetize the referral value of their customers – which can be up to 40% of total customer lifetime value. Social commerce as a plugin is a no-brainer.

But there’s more to social commerce than a plugin.  The opportunity is to use social commerce for business model innovation – using a social mindset to create and capture customer value in new and different ways.

• Tuangou (team buying) – selling to groups, not individuals (e.g. Mercedes has offered members of social networks the opportunity to club together an buy in bulk with group discounts)
• Pop-up Retail - using social media as a channel for selling limited editions. (e.g., this year Mercedes launched a special limited edition Smart Car sold only on the Chinese version of Twitter)
• Collaborative Consumption – selling stuff for sharing (e.g. Zipcar, AirBnB, Zopa)
• Collaborative Commerce – using social technology to manage supply chain alliances and collaboration. For example, last year luxury retail chain Neiman Marcus said it will put together a limited collection from 24 American designers this holiday season with an unlikely partner … discounter Target Corp

Social plugins are a good way to start with social commerce, they are worth the investment.  But the big wins will happen when companies adopt a social mindset to do business model innovation – by thinking we-commerce not me-commerce.  The future of social commerce will happen with business model innovation, not a plugin.

(Via Social Commerce Today)

Retailers are focusing their attention on mobile strategies to improve the customer experience. As many as 32% of consumers said that they have researched a product on their smartphone prior to purchasing item within the brick-and-mortar store, according to study conducted by Equation Research.

This infographic, courtesy of Mobiquity, highlights 6 retailers that rank the highest in overall customer mobile shopping experience, as well as the most significant reasons why consumers might be unsatisfied with a mobile experience.

(Via Strategies to Optimize Every Customer Interaction)

Retail is dead!

At least, that’s how Marc Andreessen sees it.  The entrepreneur and tech investor was recently quoted saying that all physical retail stores will die, succumbing eventually to the vast sea of online competition.  According to Andreessen, there will be one way to shop for everything and that way will be e-commerce.  It’s also fair to say, given that Andreessen co-founded Netscape and is invested in a number of online properties, that he might be just a little predisposed to this extreme position.  Nonetheless, his opinion caused some unrest in the retail community and should be taken seriously.

On the other hand…

I have been a vocal proponent of a somewhat different future; one that includes both virtual and physical stores.  You see, if I believed that humans shopped for no other reason than to acquire goods, I might be more aligned with Andreessen’s view but in fact, we don’t shop just to get stuff  -  any more than we go to restaurants purely for nutrition.  In fact, we often shop to fulfill other deeper needs as well – the need to disconnect, to socialize and to commune – and at times to simply be out in public. Why else would celebrities brave the hoards of paparazzi to shop for things they could undoubtedly have delivered to them on a silver platter?  The physical, human experience of shopping is in some ways of far greater value than the goods that come along for the ride.  So, while shopping is a means of acquiring the things we want and need, it’s also a meaningful social activity that appeals to our deepest, human tendency to gather in tribes.

That said, I’m convinced that between the futures that Andreessen and I describe, lies the truth.  But one thing is quite certain; that retail stores will be much different in the years to come than they are today.

But how different?

Regrettably, this is where the debate usually ends, with one side declaring brick and mortar retail dead and the other passionately defending its infinite existence.  Rarely do we hear either side attempt to describe the specific ways in which stores are likely to evolve from what we see today.  In other words, few seem willing to paint a picture the store of the near future.

So, I’ll take a shot at it, based not on what I foresee twenty years from now but rather based on what I see just around the corner and in front of me today.

And so…

These are some of the biggest changes I see to the concept of the retail “store”.

Less Take and More Make

Stores will increasingly become places that we visit, not simply to pick up mass produced articles but also to design and co-create special things with the personal assistance of experts.  Whether it’s customizing a suit, building a one-of-a-kind notebook computer or designing the perfect bicycle, stores will be the point of collaboration and customization.  These elements of customization will make for unique personal and physical experiences.

Less Product and More Production

With online players like Amazon prepared to ship just about anything we want in a matter of a day or two, our dependency on physical stores for mere distribution will continue to wane rapidly.  Smart brands will have no choice but to, focus increasing amounts of attention on making their store spaces experiential brand starting points, with high production value. Stages where magic happens.  Canadian sporting goods retailer Sport Check recently unveiled a concept store that might better be described as an adult amusement park for the sports enthusiast. Leveraging a variety of media and technology, the store has morphed into a wall-to-wall sporting experience.  The store remains the most visceral expression of the brand essence.

Less Conversion but More Converts

The purpose of retail will no longer be to solely convert every customer into a buyer of goods but rather transform them into disciples of the brand itself.  To begin a relationship – a dialogue that may play out in any number of buying channels; online, in-store, mobile or elsewhere.  It doesn’t matter where purchases take place. What matters is that the consumer falls in LOVE with the brand and shares that love with others.  The store maintains the potential to be that emotional center of gravity for the brand.

Less People but More Performance

The economics of online competition mean that brick and mortar discount merchants will have no alternative but to completely automate their store environments to remain cost-competitive – Walmart , for one, is already heading in this direction.   At high-end merchants, stock clerks, cashiers and inventory counters will be the similarly replaced with technology. Front line salespeople, however, will be higher performing professionals who are paid considerably more money than today, and will be expected to literally sweep customers off their feet! These rare individuals will be intense believers in the brand, super-users of its products and co-creators with their customers. The era of the minimum wage clerk is giving way to the simultaneous rise of the robot at the low end and the Brand Ambassador at the high end.

Less Interruption and More Exchange

The current practice among retailers of asking for personal information only to annoy and interrupt with meaningless offers will give way as consumers garner more tools to filter out these useless overtures.  Enlightened retailers, like Neiman Marcus,  will appeal to their customers for a more overt exchange of value promising distinctly better, more customized and enjoyable experiences in exchange for relevant personal information.  The transition is less about privacy and data and more about earned trust through performance.  And the fruits of these data inputs will be almost immediately tangible to customers through clearly personalized services and product offerings, as data latency quickly becomes a thing of the past.

Less Established and More Ephemeral

Consumers, particularly younger consumers are developing an insatiable appetite for what’s new and next.  Therefore, managing the same 100 stores in a mall for years on end simply won’t do anymore. Leases will shorten, new retail brands will evolve more quickly, old ones will die sooner and pop-up installations will rotate through the space. Change will be continual.  The mall manager’s role will become that of editor and curator as the mall becomes a revolving door for new brands and concepts, in a relentless effort to captivate consumers.

Less Average and (Much) More Remarkable

In a contracting market, there will be increasingly little room for sameness.  Ten retailers at the mall selling variations of the same clothing styles will soon become 5 retailers who absolutely kill it, with unique and remarkable collections.   Average, forgettable experiences simply won’t pay the rent anymore and will be kicked to the curb by outstanding stores who bring something new and fascinating to the market.

So, is retail dead?  Not a chance. If anything, it’s the very pervasiveness of online alternatives that is causing the best stores to rise out of the ashes of 30 years of mediocrity, ushering in what I, for one, believe will be the true Golden Age of the Store.

(Via Retail Prophet)

Results further indicated that these convergent processes depend on a shared network of frontal (known to be involved in regulating behavior; it also processes feelings of reward and plays a role in attention, planning and memory), temporal and parietal (helps integrate sensory information, and contributes to bodily coordination and language processing) brain regions. The results support an integrative framework for understanding the architecture of executive, social and emotional processes.

(Via NeuroRelay)

Over the last recent years, neuromarketing studies have presented various positive results concerning the effects of different advertising materials exposed to consumers and the effects they have on their brains.

(Via NeuroRelay)

Demand for retailers to provide ethical products has grown in recent years, despite increasing pressure on household budgets caused by the recession, statistics show.

While grocer Asda’s recent Mumdex report revealed that almost half of mums were planning to spend less on Christmas last year and 48 per cent believed that their financial situation would worsen in 2013, Fairtrade research also showed that 40 per cent of people are now actively seeking out ethically-sourced products despite strained household finances.

It has been five years since the recession began, and in that time ethical markets have increased in value from £35.5 billion to £47.2 billion, according to the recent Co-operative Ethical Consumer Markets Report.

In response to increasing demand from customers, many retailers have drawn up plans to improve their performance on a whole host of ethical issues, sustainable sourcing being chief among them.

As well as monitoring the ethical market across the UK through the Ethical Consumer Markets Report, mutual retail & services business The Co-operative Group also works to meet ethical targets, such as creating a dedicated supply chain for milk, through ‘Our Ethical Plan’.

Commenting on the growing demand for ethical goods, a spokesperson for The Co-operative said: “The Ethical Consumer Markets Report shows that intervention by enlightened businesses, together with regulatory intervention, is driving ethical sales growth.

“During the downturn we have seen some of the biggest ever Fairtrade conversions, be it in chocolate or sugar, and business is beginning to respond to the challenge to provide consumers with more sustainable products and services such as fish, palm oil and soya.”

While recognising that ethical consumers are “a vitally important barometer of change” and that progressive businesses can also stimulate ethical markets, the spokesperson laid the bulk of the responsibility at the Government’s door, commenting: “Ultimately, over and above the efforts of responsible business and ethical consumers, sustainable solutions require a government committed to long term intervention.”

Richard Anstead, Fairtrade’s Head of Production Management, agreed that the Government has a responsibility to support ethical retailing and sustainable supply. With David Cameron hosting the G8 Summit in June 2013, Anstead told Retail Gazette that the Prime Minister has the opportunity to make a real difference.

Outlining his hopes, Anstead commented: “We would like to see the Government get behind helping smallholders and make a commitment to finding a solution to food scarcity in the world.

“If the Government channelled more support into agriculture in developing countries, it would be an opportunity to secure supply and make a difference to people’s lives.”

Securing the supply chain, which Anstead sees as “an investment for retailers”, was a key theme for Anstead as he discussed the progress which Fairtrade has made in recent years, as well as the obstacles which it has yet to overcome.

At present, 40 per cent of sugar in supermarkets is Fairtrade, and 30-35 per cent of bananas, although Fairtrade supporters The Co-operative and Sainsbury’s now stock only Fairtrade bananas.

Nestle has also recently announced that all two-finger Kit Kats will carry the Fairtrade mark from 2013, increasing the impact on farmers in Cote d’Ivoire who were already benefitting from the use of Fairtrade products in four-finger Kit Kats.

Moving forward, Anstead wishes to add to these successes, particularly through Fairtrade Fortnight, which will take place between Monday February 25th and Sunday March 10th 2013.

“We are challenging retailers to make noise in stores so the message can really resonate in the retail environment,” he explained.

“One of the biggest opportunities for people to find out about Fairtrade is in stores because that’s where people discover and buy our products.”

One retailer with strong connections to Fairtrade is supermarket Sainsbury’s, which launched its 20×20 Sustainability Plan in 2011, setting out 20 targets relating to sustainability, community action and protecting the environment which should be achieved by 2020.

Echoing Anstead’s comments about the importance of the supply chain, Sally Uren, Deputy CEO of Forum for the Future said: “In order to continue in the success to date, Sainsbury’s needs a sustainable food system around it.

“It just isn’t possible to be sustainable and successful into the long-term if the system around you is broken.

“Sainsbury’s has done some of the best work I’ve seen in the UK on sustainable agriculture, so what I’d love to see is that work scaled up in the UK and beyond, and for Sainsbury’s not only to feed the nation in a sustainable way but help create a sustainable food system.”

Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King has argued that the retailer’s targets are “significant and stretching”, and that although there is a long journey ahead, achievements have already been made.

In December 2012, Sainsbury’s distributed £1.2 million in funding to projects dedicated to driving the future of British farming, including initiatives to extend the British strawberry season and improve the quality of Aberdeen Angus beef, and the supermarket is also the largest retailer of Marine Stewardship Council certified fish.

Research into the impact of the 20×20 plan has revealed that Sainsbury’s customers have adopted “new-fashioned values” since the onset of the recession, and are unwilling to sacrifice their principles despite the need for a cheaper price.

Neil Saunders, Managing Director of analyst firm Conlumino, confirmed that consumers want to be ethical, but told us that “price does remain the number one consideration.”

“If they can find a cheaper product elsewhere that is not ethical then people that are constrained financially probably will trade away because they will see it as being important just to get the product,” he added.

Commenting that increasing availability of ethical products and subsequent reductions in the price of these products are the main reasons for the booming ethical market, he said: “What we don’t know of course is how much it might have grown by if there hadn’t been a downturn, because I’m sure the downturn has slowed down the growth rate.”

Saunders added that, while the growth rate will eventually slow as the market reaches maturity, 2013 is set to be a year of significant growth in ethical retailing.

By Julie Fisher, Retailgazette