how have modern social media sites affected commerce?

[Sabeeha Fuller]

[Valeriu Braghis]

Well let's start with the fact that more than a half of internet users reside on Social Media sites, there they exchange their views and ideas with friends. Shopping is a very important part of everyone's life and it is only natural that social media users discuss it. Therefore brands started advertising and promoting their products directly on social media. Especially social media contributed to the development of product marketing, as the consumers are more and more tolerant to the traditional forms of advertising and people tend to give more trust to the recommendations of their friends and acquaintances. Social media provides great low cost tools for this, as you can view what your friends like and do on these resources. Also merchants and brands can interact with consumers, they can organize polls, engage in discussions and collect valuable data about their consumers' preferences and wishes. Social media is a great platform for interactive marketing

So with everything mentioned above it is only natural that brands now create facebook stores to connect with prospective buyers on the most popular resources, as you can use the "word of mouth" techniques to promote your products easily and in a very low-cost manner, social media quickly becomes a huge e-commerce platform, social commerce to be exact.

For example I work for an e-commerce provider, that helps developers to sell software online, we have recently implemented the Facebook Store feature, as there is a growing demand among software sellers for social media stores