Digital Design Blog

The Evolution of Social Shopping: ThisNext and Lemonade.com

Think about the last five or so products you purchased; how many of them were influenced by recommendations of friends or even random strangers? If you are like most Americans, the vast majority of your purchasing decisions involve some form of peer interaction.

It comes as no surprise that Nielsen reports that 78% of consumers trust their peers opinions. This hard fact continues to spawn sites (ex: epinions.com) and applications (ex: customer reviews applications) which yield a tremendous amount of power and influence over sales.

One of the latest byproducts of the online peer recommendation evolution are social shopping sites. A great example is a site called ThisNext.com which offers consumers the ability to recommend their favorite products for others to discover and purchase online. ThisNext hosts an interesting mashup which shows what and where ThisNext users are shopping for in real time: http://www.thisnext.com/activity/map/

What I really wanted to highlight is a company which is taking social shopping to the next level by literally rewarding consumers for recommending products. Lemonade.com has created an application for consumers to set up virtual ’stands’ on their social media pages to promote products. Purchases made through one’s recommendation returns 5% to 15% of the item’s cost.

If Lemonade.com sounds familiar, it’s probably because Time Magazine and CNN voted them the number 1 website of 2007. Their model has direct implications for how major retailers compete for sales as well as transforming how consumers are using sites like Facebook and MySpace. ThisNext and Lemonade are two sites to keep tabs on in the rapidly emerging category of social shopping. Now, if you excuse me, I must attend to my stand.