Social e-commerce is based on social media or online media that supports social interaction, and through the participation of customers to promote e-commerce for online purchase and sale of products and services. Social e-commerce is an innovation in the e-commerce industry marketing model and sales channels.

As we all know, in the traditional commodity circulation channels, marketing links account for a relatively high proportion of marketing expenses, and these costs are ultimately paid by consumers. Today, with the popularity of mobile social applications, relying on information resource sharing and developed logistics systems among consumers, businesses do not need to advertise on the social e-commerce platform, and they can directly expand their business by sharing with social media.

Compared with traditional e-commerce, social e-commerce has unique advantages such as experiential purchase, user active sharing, and rich sales scenes. Users are both buyers and recommenders, and are very popular among young people. The development of social e-commerce, while reducing the cost of corporate marketing, also makes consumers more affordable.

As a manifestation of the platform economy, social e-commerce has obvious advantages in brand cultivation. In the past, it took more than a decade or more to cultivate a well-known brand in the traditional market. The rise of social e-commerce has greatly accelerated this process.

In recent years, China’s social e-commerce has developed rapidly, and a number of enterprises with great development potential have emerged. According to the China Social E-Commerce Industry Development Report released by the Internet Society of China, the compound growth rate of China’s social e-commerce market has been 60% in the past five years, and the turnover last year reached 1.2 trillion yuan. At present, the number of social e-commerce consumers in China has exceeded 500 million, and the number of employees exceeds 40 million.

Through sharing, content production, distribution, etc., social e-commerce has achieved iteration of the traditional e-commerce model and become the main force of e-commerce innovation. Social e-commerce can not be underestimated in promoting the innovation of mass entrepreneurship, promoting industrial upgrading, expanding consumer markets, and increasing employment.

As the industry’s competition intensifies, the marginal effect of user growth caused by social traffic investment is also gradually reduced, which puts more demands on the operation of social e-commerce platform and supply chain capabilities. With the accelerated construction of a new generation of information infrastructure such as 5G, the social e-commerce industry has ushered in another spring.