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Social shopping surges as a third of Brits now recommend products on social media

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By John Glenday, Reporter

February 28, 2013 | 2 min read

The latest Rakuten E-commerce Index has revealed an 11% surge in the number of Britons sharing products with their social network to hit 36% of the population, making Britain the second highest growth region in the world.

The US continues to lead the social shopping pack with 39% of consumers (a 20% increase) sharing products with friends on social platforms.

Britons continue to be the biggest online spenders however, parting with an average of £1,088 per year, way above an average spend of £464 and ahead of the US, France and Germany.

The UK also leads the usage of mobile amongst Western countries with over one in ten (12%) people regularly using a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device to shop, behind Indonesia on 14% but ahead of both the US (10%), and Spain (9%).

A Rakuten spokesperson said: “At Rakuten’s Play.com, social platforms were responsible for generating £1.8 million of direct sales in 2012, and this growth has been boosted by a 122% increase in orders from social networks specifically over the last six months. Social is set to become increasingly important, for example Gartner predicted earlier this year that 50 per cent of information on new customers will be based on social network identities, such as ‘login with Facebook’, by the end of 2015, which is up from less than 5 percent today. As an industry we need to build consumer confidence in social shopping platforms, as well as allowing shoppers to easily share content through these channels.”

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