The Chinese jewellers of 18th Century used to gauge customer interest by observing the customers’ eyeballs when they show the jewels to the customers. Based on this observation the jeweller understands customers’ interest in the jewellery and close the deal. In today’s world, connected by mobile and social networks a new concept will aid businesses to simulate the eyeball observation of Chinese jewellers - Location Based Social Commerce (LBaS)
The concept of Social Commerce was developed by David Beisel to denote user-generated advertorial content on e-commerce sites,and by Steve Rubel to include collaborative e-commerce tools that enable shoppers "to get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them". The term Social Commerce till now have been largely associated with enabling user’s (customer’s) in buying the right product at the right price based on the feeds in Social Network. With explosion in smartphone usage powered by location tracking capabilities like GPS, WiFi and a fifth of the globe’s population hooked into Social Networks, Social Commerce takes businesses to a whole new level of operation. Businesses are now looking to target their customers based on the customers Social Profile and Location.
This is where Location Based Social Commerce (LBaS) comes into play.
LBaS is the confluence of mobile based location tracking and social network enabling both businesses and customers in achieving win-win in every transaction.
With LBaS, Brick & Mortar ie Store based retailers would be empowered to understand real time presence and needs of their instore customers.
Imagine we are couple of days before Valentine’s Day and you as a store manager of a jewellery store are able to engage with customers who are married men aged between 30 and 35. Or even better - you are able to spot the customer whose wedding anniversary is round the corner and you go ahead and offer him a good deal on the dress that the customer’s wife had added to the wishlist in your ecommerce site.
As of now these concepts sounds futuristic. But in the coming days we will see a huge amount of innovation and development happening in this area.
