Blog & Company News
Aug 4, 2015
The Facebook Shopping Mall
The new word on the street is that Facebook may become something of a “virtual shopping mall.” Considering they’ve already tackled the art of advertising (their main source of revenue), and communication, why not add purchases and shipping to their infamous network?
CNN explains that, “the social network will help businesses transform their Facebook pages into e-commerce.” As Facebook moves to enable businesses to sell their products and services directly through the social media platform, they will be in essence creating one of the largest ecommerce platforms to date. Not only does this greatly simplify the buying process for the consumer (as they never have to leave the site), but it is good for the companies who are trying every way possible to get their products out there and make sales. Customers will also, “be able to chat with businesses and track packages within Messenger, and transfer money between friends.”
However, allowing Facebook to implement this new process could mean price spikes. This is due to the possibility of Facebook eventually beginning to take a percentage of the sales. Additionally, the more businesses that sell through Facebook, the more publicity each company is going to want, forcing them to purchase more ad space in order to get noticed.
Forbes reports that Chris Peterson, President of Integrated Marketing Solutions, said, “Facebook is still the portal of choice for interacting with family and friends,
not a primary place to search for and buy products.” However, seeing the immense data it already has on each user, targeting the right people with each ad would be simple and on point. Although these concepts are currently only ideas, Facebook’s history of immense success and vast capabilities lead us to believe it is likely to become reality.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/16/technology/facebook-buy/index.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/retailwire/2015/07/19/can-facebook-turn-its-users-into-shoppers/
The new word on the street is that Facebook may become something of a “virtual shopping mall.” Considering they’ve already tackled the art of advertising (their main source of revenue), and communication, why not add purchases and shipping to their infamous network?
CNN explains that, “the social network will help businesses transform their Facebook pages into e-commerce.” As Facebook moves to enable businesses to sell their products and services directly through the social media platform, they will be in essence creating one of the largest ecommerce platforms to date. Not only does this greatly simplify the buying process for the consumer (as they never have to leave the site), but it is good for the companies who are trying every way possible to get their products out there and make sales. Customers will also, “be able to chat with businesses and track packages within Messenger, and transfer money between friends.”
However, allowing Facebook to implement this new process could mean price spikes. This is due to the possibility of Facebook eventually beginning to take a percentage of the sales. Additionally, the more businesses that sell through Facebook, the more publicity each company is going to want, forcing them to purchase more ad space in order to get noticed.
Forbes reports that Chris Peterson, President of Integrated Marketing Solutions, said, “Facebook is still the portal of choice for interacting with family and friends, not a primary place to search for and buy products.” However, seeing the immense data it already has on each user, targeting the right people with each ad would be simple and on point. Although these concepts are currently only ideas, Facebook’s history of immense success and vast capabilities lead us to believe it is likely to become reality.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/16/technology/facebook-buy/index.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/retailwire/2015/07/19/can-facebook-turn-its-users-into-shoppers/ 
