Social commerce in China combines content, chat, live streaming, and sharing with in-app retail purchases, obliterating the distinctions between social media networks and online stores. China’s style of ecommerce is so successful it could disrupt retail in the U.S. and Europe.
Social commerce is not clearly defined in the West, where it can describe everything from social media marketing to social selling. But in China, “social commerce” has come to represent a complete social-shopping experience that includes:
Discovering a product,
Completing the purchase.
The social commerce experience “is like you are exploring an amusement park. It is chaotic. It is fun, and it is even a little bit addictive,” said Angela Wang, who is a senior analyst with the Boston Consulting Group and a corporate director for Chanel.