Speed Summary: Social Commerce IQ Report from 8thBridge

So what’s your Social Commerce IQ? In other words, how smart are you at using social media to drive business growth?

That’s the question social commerce specialist 8thBridge seeks to answer in a new 115 page report: Social Commerce IQ: Retail (free download here).  The report is an analysis of top 200 retailers (US) on Facebook, combining analytics with survey findings (1202 US consumers) to create a Social Commerce IQ index based on a combination of reach (20%) engagement (40%) and shopping activity (40%) (see below for detail).

• The top-scoring “Genius” retail brands with social commerce IQ scores 76-100 are GameStop (92), Victoria’s Secret (89), Walmart (84), Sephora (79) and Clinique (89)
• High scoring “Superior” brands with IQ scores 51-75 include American Eagle Outfitters (75), Zales (74), (72) and Ralph Lauren (72), MAC Cosmetics (71) and Estée Lauder (69)
• “Challenged” brands with IQ scores 26-50 include Microsoft (50), Sony Electronic (48), Babies ‘R” Us (44), Sports Authority (40), and Gap (33)
• And “Deficient” brands in the dunce category with 1Q scores 0-25 include PC Connection, Ashford, Jomashop and RentAText

Just as consumers use their social intelligence to shop smarter by learning from the experience of others with social commerce, so too can you – as a vendor – sell smarter with social commerce by learning from the exclusive category of “Genius” retail brands on Facebook.  Look, Like and Learn.

Together with analytics data, the accompanying survey findings provide some useful insights into how to become a social commerce Genius.

• Status Updates for Sales Work Best – it’s news about sales events, not coupons that are the primary driver of fan engagement on Facebook. This is especially true for luxury retailers
• People buy then “Like”, not “Like” then buy – most likes come from people who have already bought the product, i.e. liking is a post-purchase activity. BIG implications for marketing – should your Facebook strategy be about customer retention and loyalty and not customer acquisition?
• Likes drive Sales (22 million of them) - Facebook has driven at least 22 million sales transactions in the US (22 million consumers have been driven to make a purchase because of a recommendation on Facebook). Overall  35% of consumers on Facebook are more likely to buy a product if it has more Facebook likes

Overall, we think retailers will find 8thBridge’s report on Social Commerce IQ useful, and Social Commerce Today was delighted to be invited to pen a short introduction to the report.

A wise man, it is said, learns from the experience of others – a fool by his own. So whether or not you buy into the proposed metric (as more data becomes available, it’d be nice to see a rebasing of scores to IQ standards, where 100 is the mean score and genius status is 140), take a look at the class of Genius social commerce brands and take a cue from them.

A wise man, it is said, learns from the experience of others – a fool by his own.

Click to Access: Social Commerce IQ: Retail

Data from the 8thBridge Social Commerce IQ Report