SNA to boost ecommerce

Constant development and modernization in technologies synced with the growing globalization has given birth to the E-commerce industry which is constantly following the upward trend. Online shopping has made available the consumers to have a vast number of choices making competition stiff among the businesses. Social media and data have also played a crucial role in assisting businesses garner more attention in order to maximize their profits and build their online presence.

However, one can say there is a lot of untapped potential that can help a business gain a competitive advantage over others and even utilize it as a breakthrough innovation that could take this entire ecommerce industry to a different level. Privacy and security issues usually prevent companies from using this data that could lead to this hidden potential being unleashed.

The biggest challenge that does lie causing the prohibiting of the use of data is that its misuse could lead to larger issues especially instances where personal information of people is made available to everyone. Considering the scenario if all of this data was actually made available without these restrictions, it would definitely benefit the ecommerce industry largely and would lead path to more advancements in the industry.

For instance, Social Network Analysis could prove to be beneficial especially for ecommerce companies assisting them in increasing their sales. Assuming that all of the data was available to the companies, one could track the the time spent by a customer on a certain page, the items he/ she clicked that displays his interest and finally in the end what was his final purchase. This would help the company know their customers better by studying their behavior patterns so that the next time they visit the website they could automatically recommend the items they would be interested in. However, one could argue, this data alone can’t be verified with because many a times, people could use names of different people i.e. a father could be buying something for his son and hence in such instances relying on this data alone would be inappropriate. This problem could be tackled by tapping in the data available from the various social media websites where one could find the information of the customers which shop from these businesses. The data from these two sources could then be combined and verified together in order to gain more customers, improve customer retention, customer loyalty. Adding to this, the use of social media could also help tap into the data of the connections the customer would have and hence assisting the companies to study their behavior as well in an attempt of making them impulse purchasers as well.

Concluding, one could definitely see the benefits the businesses could have if the data made available to them was used appropriately and SNA will play a crucial role in helping these companies achieve success.

Yatish Shrimali 

MOD-D - SNO Student, Hult