Research, ratings, and reviews platform, GoodFirms has published Social Commerce — Progress and Future: GoodFirms Survey 2022, a study that attempts to identify and analyze the current state of social commerce, its key drivers, opportunities, challenges and future scope of social commerce.
GoodFirms’ study looks at how transactional activities occur in digitally intensive social environments, especially social media. Today, brands conduct multiple activities within their social media operations from showcasing products and creating shoppable content to in-built payment procedures and AI-driven chatbot conversations.
Key findings taken from the surveyed respondents include:
- 86.5% of social commerce users preferred Instagram for product purchasing
- 56.8% bought products backed by social media influencers
- 48.6% favored inclusion of virtual try-on clothing and accessories on various social commerce platforms
- 21.6% have purchased products from social media livestreaming events
- 40.2% were unhappy with social commerce brands’ customer services
- 37.8% didn’t find their preferred payment mode when purchasing via social commerce channels
- 27.0% reported spam selling on social commerce platforms
- 54.1% would like to see buying recommendation features in social commerce platforms
- 18.9% used social commerce to know and compare the prices of products.
- 48.6% considered social media a good place to learn about newly launched products
- 23.5% liked group shopping with friends on social commerce platforms
- 51.4% believed that social commerce is the future of e-commerce
- 62.2% would like to see virtual worlds created in the metaverse for social shopping
Of course, nothing is perfect. GoodFirms maintained that 45.9% of social commerce users got redirected to another unrelated website, while 40.2% complained about customer service-related issues. Then, 37.8% of survey respondents maintained that their preferred payment method wasn’t available,18.1% received invalid coupon code issues,13.5% confronted checkout issues and 10.8% faced stockout issues. Only 10.8% of the respondents enjoyed what GoodFirms characterized as a seamless buying experience.
