Snap Inc. reimagined social commerce with the help of Augmented Reality. Founded on 16 September 2011, Snap Inc. announced yesterday at their #SnapPartnerSummit that their new AR technologies can help consumers Discover, Try-On and Buy a Galleria Bag from Prada Group or the latest Piaget Polo Skeleton watch, for example.
The American camera and social media company is driven by the belief that after the PC, Web and Mobile revolutions, it’s time for Augmented Reality to scale up. “We’re excited to celebrate the many ways that our partners have utilised our innovative platforms to grow their businesses on Snapchat, and we can’t wait to share more about what we will create together in the future,” said Evan Spiegel in a press release.
According to Deloitte Digital x Snap Inc., today, 200+ Million Daily Active Users engage with AR on Snapchat every day. By 2025, 75% of Global Consumers will be frequent AR users (daily/weekly use). These numbers have pushed social commerce in a direction that allows brands to use it as a powerful branding tool that will enable them to gather input and answer questions and listen to feedback.
Not only is social commerce a great way to build brand/consumer relationship, but it has also been proven that consumers who are influenced by social media are four times more likely to spend more on purchases, according to SearchEngineWatch.com This is mainly because social media plays a crucial role in connecting people, developing relationships and creating a more personalised shopping experience within a social media platform.
As the act of shopping increasingly becomes a social activity, it sometimes feels like the comment sections on social media platforms has become the place where you will come for advice. Social shopping allows for the eCommerce experience to become more social. It will enable consumers to connect with those who e similar tastes and debate whether they should or should not make the purchase.
“the act of shopping increasingly becomes a social activity.”
This social shopping model being adopted by more and more brands is a method of eCommerce shopping that is gaining momentum thanks to new technologies that mimic the social interactions usually conducted in physical stores among friends and even strangers.
Although it sounds “gravy”, there are some disadvantages to social shopping like loss of control, ROI could be a long time coming, there is a risk of diluting your brand’s voice, and it can become quite a time-consuming task if you do not know what your objectives are.
Social eCommerce as a concept has been primarily utilised in China, but it has been slowly adopted in the western world in recent years. Identified as being quite influential in decision-making, the future of social commerce, especially amid the COVID-19 crisis, has been estimated to increase at a soaring rate of 31.4%. Social commerce will continue to grow in 2021 as shoppers stick with digital habits and as both eCommerce and traditional retailers quickly adapt to the post-COVID-19 environment.
Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.