An Empirical Study on the Usage of Social Media in German B2C-Online Stores

Abstract

Customers in electronic commerce (e-commerce) are shifting more and more from content consumers to content producers. Social media features (like customer reviews) allow and encourage user interaction in online stores. An interesting question is, which social media features are actually provided by online stores to support user interaction. We contribute knowledge to this question, by studying the social media features of the 115 highest-grossing German B2C-online stores from the years 2010 and 2011. We categorize the results of the observational study into the seven building blocks of social media to understand what areas of social media are used the most in these online stores. The results of our study show, that the average online store implements about five social media features and that the majority of the features are placed on product pages. The most common features were customer reviews and ratings and the sharing and liking of product details.