The holiday season showed a fantastic increase in online shopping and quite a few friends and family mentioned they did a large amount of their gift shopping through sites such as Amazon and Ebay. While we already know online shopping is increasing in popularity over hitting the brick and mortar shops, there’s a relatively new development that may just add a fun, new perspective to shopping — social.
Social Purchasing
Sure, sites like Amazon and Ebay make it pretty easy to share items you want to purchase with others, but very few sites actually make shopping a group affair. I’ve signed up for Groupon and I’ve been watching local deals to see if it’s really worth my time. Needless to say, it’s definitely worth checking out and, more importantly, fun to snag deals with a group of friends.
Groupon Deal
Not only are sites like Groupon fun with friends, they’re very beneficial for retailers. It’s a win-win situation and I certainly think the concept could be applied at a deeper level for retailers. Say you walk into your local electronics store and see something you’d be interested in buying, perhaps at a slightly cheaper price. If you were able to socialize it and show the retailer there is a larger group of people also interested, the retailer could make a great deal for the group and at the same time land a large group deal. Again, everyone wins.
Even More Social?
While Groupon’s concept is pretty great to begin with, I can’t help but wonder how else people will cross shopping with social aspects. We’ve morphed into a society that socializes less in person and more online but I don’t think we’ll get too far from human interaction as it’s something we deeply crave, perhaps just in a different way.
With technology continually advancing we might see these social purchasing concepts pushed into the smaller nooks of our day to day lives. Today’s smart phones allow an unprecedented level of social connection that’s increasingly reducing the wall between the web and physical world. What else might we see?
Maybe soon we’ll be able to walk into a store, accidentally coming across an amazing deal, and be able to simply snap a few photos to share the deal with your friends online. Should they decide to purchase, you can leave the store with their purchases and deliver them to your friends when you see them later. And at no risk financially to yourself, the retailer or your friends.
What are your thoughts on the social aspect of life converging with the shopping aspect of life? I think of the movies that show futuristic worlds where advertisements recognize you and make purchasing the advertised product a snap — no credit cards, no cash, no hassle — but they’ve never shown a social aspect in those movies. It’s an interesting thought. What other concepts would you like to see in these areas?