By Sarah Wright | August 9, 2017
Commerce first started when people would trade items they made for items they needed. Since then, money, retail stores, malls and mass production have all changed the landscape of commerce dramatically. eCommerce was another pivotal point in history and also had very humble beginnings. Now, we are moving beyond eCommerce – where are we going? First, we must look at where eCommerce began…
eCommerce
eCommerce has a simple definition: the process of buying and selling online. The eCommerce we are familiar with today evolved slowly along with the Internet itself. For a long time, the National Science Foundation had strict “acceptable use” rules about how the Internet should be used and perpetuated the idea that the Internet was funded for research, not commerce (Kelly 2005). They feared that bringing in “commercial interests” would lessen the value of the Internet as a resource. (Kelly 2005). Once they lifted these regulations, however, the real eCommerce revolution began. In 1995 the eCommerce giants eBay and Amazon were launched. More and more businesses were able to expand to online sales, and this paradigm shift was met with much criticism from many retailers. But, as we know, online sales are extremely popular and the percentage of sales conducted online continue to increase each year.
sCommerce
Social commerce is defined as leveraging of social media to educate and engage with consumers, from business to consumer, consumer to consumer and business to business (Busalim 2016).
sCommerce began as an add-on to eCommerce, when Amazon and eBay implemented the ability to write reviews on products in the late 90s (Busalim 2016). In 2005, Yahoo introduced the term “social commerce” to describe a new collaborative shopping feature on its shopping sites. This added a more personal aspect to shopping, as people wanted to know as much information about the product before they bought it. People were helping each other, and this social sharing of information created a new dimension to the online experience. Businesses benefitted from this too, and when businesses started getting on social media themselves, they saw benefits like developing closer relationships with customers, increasing sales and encouraging loyalty (Busalim 2016).
rCommerce
What is next on the online shopping horizon?
Referral commerce. rCommerce for short.
rCommerce is the next wave, and rBux is at the centre of it. A purposeful online community about sharing the best products, based on personal experiences. Beyond creating a rave review, referring is a hybrid between reading a review and receiving a suggestion from a friend. Instead of a review passively sitting on a product page, people can engage with the product, and share it with a friend who they think might enjoy it. Those who are seeking to buy a new product can reach out and ask for suggestions. Others can then share their experiences with others who they know are interested. And finally, people who create successful referrals are rewarded with a percentage of the sale. People coming to rBux are looking for the best products, and we want to provide them with a platform they can share products easily and comfortably on.
The idea is simple. An organized, rewards based method that will become the newest addition to the landscape of eCommerce and sCommerce.
Join rBux to see how we are getting started with this today!
References
Busalim, A.H. (2016) Understanding social commerce: A systematic literature review and directions for further research. International Journal of Information Management 36 (6), 1075–1088.
Kevin, Kelly (August 2005), “We Are the Web”, Wired, 13 (8) https://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/?pg=2
