Networking Pays Off, Especially for E-commerce
May 7th, 2010 by admin
Unfortunately there are still too few scientific studies on networking effects in e-commerce. Understandable though, due to limited opportunities to make direct comparisons. All the more exciting that a new study has been released (PDF) from France and the US with the title Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks, whose results have been recently published in the Journal of Marketing Research. The study examines what happens when merchants begin to network with each other:
Picture of Networking Pays Off, Especially for E-commerce [source:excitingcommerce.com]
“This article examines the economic value implications of a social network between sellers in a large online social commerce marketplace. In this marketplace, each seller creates his or her own shop, and network ties between sellers are directed hyperlinks between their shops.
Does allowing sellers to connect to each other create value (i.e., increase sales)? What are the mechanisms through which this value is created? and How is this value distributed across sellers in the network and how does the position of a seller in the network (e.g., its centrality) influence how much he or she benefits or suffers from the network? The authors find that:
allowing sellers to connect generates considerable economic value the network’s value lies primarily in making shops more accessible to customers browsing the marketplace (the network creates a “virtual shopping mall”), and the sellers who benefit the most from the network are not necessarily those who are central to the network but rather those whose accessibility is most enhanced by the network.”
Although kept somewhat under wraps, seasoned market observers can guess that the object of study, a large online social commerce marketplace, could only be the Exciting Commerce Star of the Year 2006 – Zlio.
From Social Shopping to Personal Shopping Network Etsy 2010: How Social Can Commerce Get? Social Commerce: Zlio Launches Marketplace for Merchants and Suppliers
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]
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