Design & Success factors of social commerce

MORE THAN JUST PRETTY PICTURES AND NICE STORIES:
INSTAGRAM & CO. AS A SHOPPING PLATFORM

Advancing digitalization has fundamentally changed both the way we use media and the way consumers shop and consume. This is reflected, among other things, in increasing online activities such as online shopping. Social media (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) are playing an increasingly important role in e-commerce as a promising marketing approach. The use of social media as a direct sales channel, known as social commerce, is therefore considered to have great potential for the future.

In particular for the marketing of emotionally charged experiential goods such as wine, the constant exchange with wine experts, other wine consumers and friends is an important part of the customer experience. Consequently, social commerce as a channel that promotes this interaction could develop into an important marketing and sales approach of the future. Despite the presumed potential, there has been no research on social commerce explicitly related to the wine industry.

Project duration: 01.10.2020 - 31.08.2023

Funded by the Forschungsring des Deutschen Weinbaus (FDW)

The aim of the research project on social commerce is to address this need for research both from a scientific perspective and to derive well-founded recommendations for action for an online wine marketing strategy for winegrowers, winegrowers' cooperatives and wine merchants. As a result, the players in the wine industry should be supported in developing successful social commerce offers or optimizing existing online marketing approaches in order to increase the competitiveness of German companies in an international context.

The following research areas are of particular interest:

Target groups and use of social commerce offerings and activities
Success factors, typical design approaches and framework conditions for social commerce
Embedding social commerce in digital marketing strategies / multi-channel approaches