Social commerce is the act of buying and selling products directly via social media platforms. Social commerce is distinct from social media marketing, as the intent of the former is to make the sale or customer conversion within the social platform itself. It also involves harnessing social networks to drive online sales through product reviews and recommendations.  

Research has shown that by leveraging the power of social media, online sellers can enhance sales conversions while reducing online sales cost by improving customer stickiness, providing cross-selling opportunities, and reducing the number of returned items. 

Social commerce has spawned various trends for interacting with shoppers, where both established social media platforms (which provide the underlying infrastructure for social commerce to take place) and startups provide tools and platforms to help brands and individual sellers succeed.  

Social commerce platforms and tools are used by established brands and independent direct-to-consumer (D2C) sellers. Social commerce increases the sales of established brands by extending their existing ecommerce offerings to another customer touchpoint. Meanwhile, social commerce provides a cost-effective channel for independent sellers to build a target audience to convert into customers.

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