Enabling Social Commerce - A New Form of E-commerce that Leverages Social Ties Between Users

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Social commerce is defined by IBM as "the concept of word-of-mouth applied to e-commerce". When a user interacts online, she knowingly or unknowingly spreads the word about a product or brand; hence members of her online community can leverage her opinions in their purchase decisions. As word-of-mouth relies on social ties, it is becoming the marketing strategy of choice deployed on social media and e-commerce websites. For business and academia there is a need to understand social commerce, to study the design of platforms that support it, and to investigate the social ties that are inherent to these platforms, all in a way that satisfies businesses and consumers. The objectives of this proposal are twofold. First, we will study the design of social commerce platforms. There are two categories of such platforms: those that add "commerce" features to social media platforms (e.g., applications that enable e-commerce on Facebook); and those that add "social" features to e-commerce platforms (e.g., having a button on Amazon for the customer to "share" her purchases with her Facebook friends). We will investigate design frameworks and processes for developing social commerce platforms in an efficient and effective way. Second, we will study algorithms that predict the formation of ties (aka links) and those that detect communities on social commerce platforms. This proposal will have an economic impact by enabling social commerce; and a scientific impact by creating and using new methodologies to address complex issues such as innovative social commerce design and more accurate and efficient algorithms for social tie prediction and community detection.