Fusing Online Commerce and Social Network:Enhance Social Shopping Experience via

Desktop Application

A Master Project PresentedBy

Ning Song

Introduction: Overview

• Investigate the possibility to create a unique social shopping environment for shoppers.

• Design an application that merges shopping functionalities of online marketplace with the social networking capability of social network community.

• Create a prototype that answers to the design challenge.

Social Commerce & Social Shopping

• Social commerce: merging of online shopping and social networking activities

• Social shopping : a form of social commerce• Online word-of-mouth(WOM)• Consumer activities such as creating user

contents, product review, recommendations and rating, etc (Stephen and Toubia, 2009)

Existing Studies• Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006), effect of online

book review on the overall sale numbers of books

• Singer and Sundararajan (2008) studied the correlation between peer preferences and consumer’s buying behaviors on Amazon.com

eBay’s Social Commerce Ambition

• Amazon.com : a social commerce pioneer• eBay is quickly catching up• eBay aims to become a social commerce

marketplace• Moves: opens up API for developers, own

social network and improved social commerce functions on site.

Existing Applications eBay Desktop• The official eBay

desktop client• Enabled many eBay

functions • Lack social commerce

functions

• eBay’s official Facebook application

• Share eBay activities with Facebook friends

• “On site” application,hard to reach, limited functionality.

Facebook eBay Marketplace

Problems with eBay’s Social Commerce Applications

• There are not many of them• Even less focus on “social shopping”• Limited functionalities

Designing a New Social Shopping Environment

• Application that merge eBay’s commercial functionalities with Facebook’s social networking features

• Should improve user’s overall social shopping experience

Research Questions

• A) How can I combine functionalities of social media website with functionalities of online commerce website to create unique social shopping experiences for online shoppers and social media users?

• B) What are the features that should be included in such applications in order to facilitate user’s social shopping activities?

Analyzing Social Shopping Tasks

• Functionalities related to eBay product information – Search for eBay listings by search keywords– Browse search results in respond to search

requests– Check for listing details for individual eBay items

• Functionalities related to eBay purchase– Save (bookmark) item for future viewing– Remind user of item status– Direct link to the actual listing page for item

purchase

• Functionalities related to Facebook social communication– Access to user’s Facebook friends/groups info.– Search Facebook for information related to the

item of interest– Communicate with friends about the item of

interest– Share with friends of links, images or other media

formats – Possibility to expand user’s social network while

shopping socially

Building the Application

Goals Recap• Incorporate essential eBay + Facebook

functionalities• Create unique social shopping environment

Technology

• Language: Actionscript 3• Environment: Flash builder 3 • Application: Adobe AIR desktop application• Advantage:

-Run on different operating systems/platforms-Easy download/installation-Friendly development environments

Web Communication Structure • eBay and Facebook API Protocol: REST Data format: JSON Official Actionscript library

Interface DesignInterface design principles by Constantine and

Lockwood (2000):• The structure principle• The simplicity principle• The visibility principle• The feedback principle• The tolerance principle

Early UI Design Example

OVERVIEW OF APPLICATION

Facebook login button, click to show Facebook friend list

Facebook friend list, click to show chat area

Search button, search eBay and Facebook

Setup, Facebook login/out

Trash can, drag item over to delete

Help page

Drag friend’s icon to desktop

Application Walkthrough

Application Functionalities

• Search for eBay items• Browse eBay search results• Check for listing details for eBay items• Direct link to the actual listing page• Save (bookmark) item in the application• Remind of item status• Share eBay item on Facebook (title, link, picture)

• Log user into Facebook• Display Facebook friend list• Search Facebook fan groups by keywords• Display user’s Facebook groups • View member information of Facebook groups• Add members as friends• Post and display messages to friends on Facebook• Post and display comments to posts on Facebook

Discussion

• Design goal recap: Create an application that merges the

shopping functionalities of eBay with the social networking capability of Facebook to create a unique social shopping environment for users.

Implementation

• Investigate the necessary eBay and Facebook social shopping activities

• Design an application with functionalities that facilitate these activities

• Design interface applying the interface design principles

Future Extension

• Debug• Code optimization • Further improve social shopping

functionalities • UI optimization