Social Side Up

By creating a zero investment model for sellers, and building trust among buyers, social commerce is changing the rules of the etail game

- Pranit Sarda

Nalini Trivedi (name changed) came across a page, womenclothestudio. com, while browsing Instagram on a Sunday evening. The page offered her an attractive jumpsuit for just ₹360. Not seeing an option to pay cash-on-delivery (COD), Trivedi made the payment online and received a bill that said she would receive the order within a week. Several days later, she had still not received the order. She called the number listed on the website but it was unreachable and the page itself disappeared after a couple of days. Her long complaint mail to them also bounced.

Trivedi’s experience captures the entire gamut of social commerce—commerce and selling facilitated by social media—where recommendations are made on the basis of a user’s likes and preferences. This ease of shopping, however, also comes with inherent danger, like in Trivedi’s case.

Enter secure platforms that help offline businesses go online, use referral systems to buy, sell or promote products and services, all the while capitalising on people’s usage of social media.

Unlike random pages on social media apps like Instagram, these platforms keep all the stakeholders’ interests in mind while aiming to increase the number of transactions. And unlike Facebook Marketplace, social commerce platforms also take on the responsibility to handle logistics, returns, payments— generally COD—and any disputes.

The medium generally used to distribute product information is a social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, and the product is sold to the end customer by a friend, family or relative. Social commerce platforms provide ecommerce functions, but use social media to help them through it.