Social Commerce Market Insights: Global Opportunity Analysis & Industry Forecast, 2019-2026

The combination of Social Media and e-Commerce is generally termed as Social Commerce. The Global Social Commerce Market is mainly driven by changing consumer preferences, coupled with paradigm-shifting culture among younger generations.

The fine line between social media and the e-commerce sector is reducing significantly, driving the inception of a new platform called social commerce. People are found to spend majority of their time on social media, and this has made social commerce an unquestionable trend.

Rising number of internet, social media, and mobile phone users is predicted to significantly drive the global social commerce market during the projected period. In 2019, the number of worldwide internet users was up to 4.4 billion, while social media and mobile phone users was 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion, respectively.

The growing use of social media advertising is one of the primary factors assisting market growth. The companies operating in the e-commerce industry utilize social media platforms to improve their customer base through advertising. With the growing acceptance of social media, the advertisers operating in the e-commerce sector are using banner display advertisements and some sponsored content to attract customers. They help in effective engagement of the target audience with the suppliers. Moreover, e-commerce related posts on these platforms are highly viewed and shared by users. The benefits offered by social commerce have increased its popularity and in turn, propelled the growth of the social commerce market.

Rapid technological innovations have created a revolution among the people using social media platforms recently. The enhanced application capabilities no more limit the use of social commerce to just interaction among people but provide extensive options for shopping and information exchange. These features have led to an increase in the adoption of these platforms over the previous years. Features such as user-friendly UI, coupled with the presence of chatbots (with Artificial Intelligence) are further predicted to enhance the social commerce market over the coming years. The chatbots will use Artificial Intelligence to converse with the customer, through a mimicked conversation style of a human being. This will be accomplished by involving the users in some self-initiated tasks, along with quasi-conversations. Such technological advancements will drive the global social commerce market in the coming years.

As per studies, currently, the people belonging to generation Z are spending 2-3 times more time shopping on social media platforms than the average consumer, which will significantly enhance the social commerce market during the coming years.

Some of the key and potential players in the global social commerce market include Facebook, Pinterest, Tencent, Weibo, and many others. Product development and agreements are some of the key strategies opted by the operating companies in this market.