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Social Shopping

Social shopping applications have enormous potential to transform the apparel retail landscape. By embracing the inherently social nature of shopping, these new technologies could go beyond providing consumers with basic utilitarian information as seen on traditional ratings websites or wishlists, by appealing to more hedonic needs: the need for approval from peers, the desire for self expression, and the desire for entertainment.

Social Shopping
Social Shopping
PDF (6MB)

Eric Johnson
Video: Eric Johnson on Beet.tv talks about how virtual reality is the next step for the retail world.

In the study "Social Shopping: How Technology Is Reshaping the Consumer Experience in Apparel Retailing," we explore several emergent social interaction applications that are beginning to reshape the customer experience in the retail apparel industry.

One of the major problems that online retailers face is that consumers typically visit retail websites for the express purpose of making a specific purchase, but do not engage in the "social shopping" activities that occur in physical stores, which historically lead to the greater purchasing practices. New social shopping applications have the potential to solve this problem by being able to re-create the inherently social aspects of real-world shopping and drive more typical mall purchasing behavior.

The timing for these applications may be just right as today's youth already show an apparently high level of comfort with technology and with sharing personal information online on existing social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace.

This paper looks at four distinct types of social shopping applications in the apparel retail market. The first type, examples of which are often referred to as "virtual worlds," allows members to interact and shop within online re-creations of real physical spaces, such as streets and shopping malls. The second allows consumers to try on apparel merchandise and share the look with others without putting the clothes on their bodies or, in some cases, even stepping foot inside a store. The third type of application includes web communities that facilitate ratings and advice on apparel-related topics, thereby generating sales. Finally, we investigate weblogs that directly enable or influence apparel purchase.

Project leaders:
(l. to r.) M. Eric Johnson, CDS Director; Aaron Cohn T'07; and Juliane Park T'07

M. Eric Johnson, CDS Director Aaron Cohn Juliane Park T'07

"If the Mirror Could Talk (It Can)," The New York Times
Web 2.0 and the Corporation - A Thought Leadership Roundtable on Digital Strategies
Managing Consumer Data - A Tech@Tuck event