What Is Social Commerce?

2.2 Social commerce is a form of commerce mediated by social media involving convergence between the online and offline environments (Wang and Zhang 2012). In a broad sense, social commerce involves the use of Internet-based media that allow people to participate in the marketing, selling, comparing, curating, buying, and sharing of products and services in both online and offline marketplaces, and in communities. Social commerce has received a lot of attention for shaping emerging commercial channels on the Internet. Many e-retailers are taking benefits of social technologies and services to expand their businesses. Since social media have become readily accessible, more consumers use it as a source of information about companies, brands,

It aims to foster research that can give a better understanding of social commerce-related phenomena and to provide guidance to social commerce practice. In this introduction to the special issue, we first produce an overview of this emerging area. Then we develop an integrated research framework for social commerce by reviewing and referencing several frameworks to guide understanding social commerce research. After that, we present some preliminary findings from a bibliometric study of social commerce publications. The findings highlight the emerging nature and excitement of social commerce to date. They also demonstrate the promise of the integrated research framework. Finally, we describe the five articles appearing in this special

firstly introduced the term social commerce. Yahoo! defines the term social commerce as “The Shoposphere and Pick Lists are examples of social commerce. We believe the community of shoppers is one of the best sources for product information and advice” (Yahoo! 2005)

There are several definitions of term social commerce. This is because social commerce could mean different things depending on the different demand of the business. Here are some representative definitions:

IBM defines the term social commerce as the concept in the context of E-commerce that connects and fosters customers in order to help improving experience. The term social commerce includes ratings, reviews, blogs, micro-blogs, forums and communities. (IBM Corporation 2009)

Bazaarvoice defines social commerce as the strategies of connecting customers together and use these connections for commercial purpose. (Decker 2007)

The Altimeter group defines social commerce as the use of social technologies in order to connect, listen, understand and engage to improve shopping experiences. (Cecere 2010)

Although there are various definitions for social commerce, but when study them through, we may find that they have a common point: social commerce is related to connecting people and use the power of this connection to support commercial