Fusing Online Commerce and Social Network:
Enhance Social Shopping Experience via
Desktop Application
A Master Project Presented
By
Ning Song
Introduction: Overview
• Investigate the possibility to create a unique
social shopping environment for shoppers.
• Design an application that merges shopping
functionalities of online marketplace with the
social networking capability of social network
community.
• Create a prototype that answers to the design
challenge.
Social Commerce & Social Shopping
• Social commerce: merging of online shopping
and social networking activities
• Social shopping : a form of social commerce
• Online word-of-mouth(WOM)
• Consumer activities such as creating user
contents, product review, recommendations
and rating, etc (Stephen and Toubia, 2009)
Existing Studies
• Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006), effect of online
book review on the overall sale numbers of
books
• Singer and Sundararajan (2008) studied the
correlation between peer preferences and
consumer’s buying behaviors on Amazon.com
eBay’s Social Commerce Ambition
• Amazon.com : a social commerce pioneer
• eBay is quickly catching up
• eBay aims to become a social commerce
marketplace
• Moves: opens up API for developers, own
social network and improved social commerce
functions on site.
Existing Applications
eBay Desktop
• The official eBay
desktop client
• Enabled many eBay
functions
• Lack social commerce
functions
Facebook eBay Marketplace
• eBay’s official
Facebook application
• Share eBay activities
with Facebook friends
• “On site” application,
hard to reach, limited
functionality.
Problems with eBay’s Social
Commerce Applications
• There are not many of them
• Even less focus on “social shopping”
• Limited functionalities
Designing a New Social Shopping
Environment
• Application that merge eBay’s commercial
functionalities with Facebook’s social
networking features
• Should improve user’s overall social shopping
experience
Research Questions
• A) How can I combine functionalities of social
media website with functionalities of online
commerce website to create unique social
shopping experiences for online shoppers and
social media users?
• B) What are the features that should be
included in such applications in order to
facilitate user’s social shopping activities?
Analyzing Social Shopping Tasks
• Functionalities related to eBay product
information
– Search for eBay listings by search keywords
– Browse search results in respond to search
requests
– Check for listing details for individual eBay items
• Functionalities related to eBay purchase
– Save (bookmark) item for future viewing
– Remind user of item status
– Direct link to the actual listing page for item
purchase
• Functionalities related to Facebook social
communication
– Access to user’s Facebook friends/groups info.
– Search Facebook for information related to the
item of interest
– Communicate with friends about the item of
interest
– Share with friends of links, images or other media
formats
– Possibility to expand user’s social network while
shopping socially
Building the Application
Goals Recap
• Incorporate essential eBay + Facebook
functionalities
• Create unique social shopping environment
Technology
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Language: Actionscript 3
Environment: Flash builder 3
Application: Adobe AIR desktop application
Advantage:
-Run on different operating systems/platforms
-Easy download/installation
-Friendly development environments
Web Communication Structure
• eBay and Facebook API
Protocol: REST
Data format: JSON
Official Actionscript library
Interface Design
Interface design principles by Constantine and
Lockwood (2000):
• The structure principle
• The simplicity principle
• The visibility principle
• The feedback principle
• The tolerance principle
Early UI Design Example
OVERVIEW OF APPLICATION
Facebook login button, click to show
Facebook friend list
Facebook friend list, click to
show chat area
Search button, search eBay and
Facebook
Setup, Facebook
login/out
Help page
Trash can, drag item
over to delete
Drag friend’s
icon to desktop
Application Walkthrough
Application Functionalities
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Search for eBay items
Browse eBay search results
Check for listing details for eBay items
Direct link to the actual listing page
Save (bookmark) item in the application
Remind of item status
Share eBay item on Facebook (title, link, picture)
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Log user into Facebook
Display Facebook friend list
Search Facebook fan groups by keywords
Display user’s Facebook groups
View member information of Facebook groups
Add members as friends
Post and display messages to friends on Facebook
Post and display comments to posts on Facebook
Discussion
• Design goal recap:
Create an application that merges the
shopping functionalities of eBay with the
social networking capability of Facebook to
create a unique social shopping environment
for users.
Implementation
• Investigate the necessary eBay and Facebook
social shopping activities
• Design an application with functionalities that
facilitate these activities
• Design interface applying the interface design
principles
Future Extension
• Debug
• Code optimization
• Further improve social shopping
functionalities
• UI optimization