By Sarah Kenny
Social media continues to grow into one of the most influential multidimensional platforms. With each innovative development, social media becomes a bit less social, and a bit more commercial. This multidimensional platform offers a variety of consumer benefits, including one of the newest trends; buy buttons. This developing new trend intertwines social media with direct advertising and mobile commerce. Although advertising is not new to social media, buy buttons provide consumers with the ability to purchase a product directly without actually having to leave their social media website or app. Much like many other developments in social media, buy buttons meet our economy’s evolving on-demand needs. As more and more social media outlets begin to incorporate instant and on-demand features such as buy buttons, we will see a whole new dimension of social advertising that will increase mobile commerce.
In fact, the on-demand features that buy buttons provide are beneficial to both the industry and consumer in creating a direct and frictionless mobile commerce exchange. For the companies that have begun to incorporate buy buttons, “their hope is that people will go from merely browsing their platforms to buying products on them” (Luckerson). Take for example Instagram, which now provides buy buttons for consumers. For a social media app like Instagram that was once simply used for the browsing and sharing of images, this development of buy buttons has created a whole new playing field for its users. Businesses are able to partner with Instagram to produce targeted advertisements in order to direct users to purchase products straight through their Instagram app.
For the social media industry, this is a breakthrough that provides a whole new dimension of advertising and commercial use. Social media platforms can work with retailers to incorporate buy buttons in order to increase profits on both ends. Of course the platforms and retailers cannot be successful without the consumer. Since buy buttons are still in the early stages, it is difficult to predict how the users will respond. However, there are many reasons to believe that buy buttons will have a drastic impact on the increase of mobile commerce because it caters to the consumers needs. The two main factors of buy buttons that supports this theory are demonstrated through the following:
1. “Uberfication” of buy buttons
2. Bridging the gap between company and consumer
The term “uberfication” has recently been used to describe many of our economy’s developing habits and desires. “Uberfication” means that products are being designed to provide on demand and instant services to the consumers. After the success of the Uber app, which provides on-demand car service, followed many other social media platforms which posses the same features. Social media developments are being designed to cater to the consumers need for instant and on-demand services. Instagram is a perfect example of “uberfication” with the development of their new buy buttons.
Not only do buy buttons posses “uberfication” qualities, but they also bridge the gap between the consumer and the company. With the development of social media, it created a whole new dynamic between the consumer and the company that was much more direct and personal. Buy buttons take this a step further and actually allow the consumer to directly buy something through the companies Instagram or Pinterest page. In a study commissioned by the Advertising Research Foundation, experts found that consumers were using social media to connect with the brands and retailers, which generally enhanced the consumers mobile shopping. Social media gives consumers the feeling that “they are in the control of the process, equipped with all the information they need to be the seller’s equal in the purchase process”(Powers 3). This study supports the theory that buy buttons cater to the consumers desire to feel in control and connected with the retailer by providing a direct way to purchase a product.
Since buy buttons posses all of the features that consumers are looking for, it’s hard to imagine that the trend won’t be a success. The success is going to bring about a lot of changes for the social media industry. These changes are going to help increase mobile commerce and provide new forms of advertising through social media. In 2014 Nielsen found that 87 percent of consumers use their mobile phones for shopping in their Advertising & Audiences report. This number is only going to get higher once buy buttons really take off, and more businesses develop partnerships with social media platforms like Instagram. There are millions of businesses that use Instagram to promote and market their products, and these buy buttons now offer a more direct way to advertise.
KnockMedia is one of the millions of companies to join Instagram as a way to directly connect with users. This social media platform really allows for the company and consumer to directly interact through shared images and videos. With the addition of buy buttons now companies can target individuals with selected products. Although KnockMedia has not used the Instagram buy buttons, the platform still allows for successful marketing. In fact if you are a business or company that does not have an Instagram account, you should definitely create one right away. Even if you aren’t interested in using targeted advertising or buy buttons, Instagram provides a creative way for directly marketing and interacting with individuals. Check out KnockMedia’s Instagram account @knockmedia.ct to learn more about the company and see how Instagram can help you connect with your consumers or clients.