Turning social networks into e-commerce marketplaces : social commerce on Facebook and beyond with Shopidoo - the Social Shopping Platform

Abstract

"Shopidoo offers the merchants storefronts and social commerce mechanisms to engage multi-million audiences in social interactions during online buying across multiple channels like: Facebook-, web- and mobile commerce. Shopidoo has two major customer segments: the merchants and the end-users. The merchants are benefiting from social storefronts and social promotion mechanisms in order to boost sales; while the end users benefit from discounts, bulk offers, recommendations, social experience, coupons and other benefits, resulting from promotions of the merchants via the Shopidoo Platform. Our targeted customers are merchants that are already operating online stores on some e-commerce platforms and want to create a counterpart store inside Facebook and on mobile devices, or those who don't have online store - and would like to establish one. Shopidoo Services help merchants on various stages of an e-commerce value chain. Due to the modular structure of the project we could serve customers with various needs. The customers having online stores could connect to Shopidoo for social commerce features, while the merchants who have no established stores - could benefit also from our full e-commerce solution integrated with social shopping functionalities. Revenues are generated by merchant subscriptions, setup and custom fees, and transaction fees. The margin makes up around 40%, depending on the revenue stream. Social shopping is gaining momentum; there is a growing trend of sharing and trusting product recommendations during purchase. Social networks are a playground for such actions and tend to be more and more the predecessor and influencer of a purchase decision. An intersection of a huge user-base and a huge products base through social interaction incentives is a success prerequisite for the project. "