Social Shopping Sites – Is the Hype Justifiable?

These days there is excitement surrounding everything related to social media marketing. Marketers are eager to be at the fore, be it the social presence on sites like Facebook or Twitter or the latest social offering – social shopping sites. The hype about social shopping sites like LivingSocial.com and Groupon.com demonstrate that they have a lot of potential. But have the audiences really caught on to this trend?

A recent survey in this regards by JPMorgan came up with some interesting figures. According to the survey, which included U.S online buyers, 39% users were unfamiliar with social shopping sites, 28% of the users had heard of such sites but not used them and only 17% of the survey participants had bought from social shopping sites. This means that two in five survey participants had never even heard of the social shopping sites.

The survey also demonstrated that income and age had significant influence on whether surveyed online buyers used social shopping sites or not. Users with higher income were more likely to use such sites than those who were not so well off. Among users with income less than $50k, only 10% had bought from such sites while 38% were familiar but had not bought from these sites. While among users with income more than $100k, 23% users had bought from such sites and 46% were aware but had not used these sites.

As far as age was concerned, users above 55 years were least likely to use these sites with only 3% having used such sites and 43% were familiar but never used the sites, while shoppers between 18 to 34 years were almost 10 times more likely to use these sites.