Facebook launches its e-commerce: Facebook Shops
On 19th of May Mark Zuckerberg announced the introduction of Facebook Shops. Although for some years Facebook has approached online sales thanks to the introduction of Marketiplace, with Shops the king of social networks, with more than 2 billion active users, decides to enter into competition with the two giants of e-commerce: Amazon and Alibaba.
What does Facebook Shops consist of
With Shops, Facebook wants to introduce an e-commerce that unlike competitors will be totally free and easy to create for shopkeepers. The idea behind it is that “every small business can easily start a shop to sell things directly across our apps” says Zuckerberg directly on his profile.
They will be able to open their own shop, showing the products in a virtual showcase created thanks to the use of artificial intelligence and augmented reality. As Zuckerberg explains, once created the shop will appear on the Facebook and Instagram account and soon also on Messanger and Whatsapp, ensuring the speed of service.
From the point of view of potential customers of Facebook Shops, there will be features that allow individuals to discover products sold by small businesses that may be interesting for them.
Facebook Shops, artificial intelligence and augmented reality
The idea of Facebook is to take advantage of the progress made in the fields of artificial intelligence and augmented reality to ensure a better online shopping experience. Individual sellers will have the opportunity to create their own shop windows at will, show in the foreground the most relevant products and through augmented reality allow customers to try the products as clothing, glasses or make up before proceeding with the purchase.
Will there be competition with Amazon and Alibaba?
With the introduction of e-commerce with Facebook Shops, surely Amazon and Alibaba will suffer. The main factor, as mentioned before, is the fact that Shops will be free unlike the other two and this will encourage merchants to take advantage of the social network. Moreover, from what we understand Facebook Shops will be dedicated in particular to small and medium-sized companies, and those who do not have an important budget to spend on the e-commerce service. Through Facebook, Messanger and Whatsapp companies can communicate with customers, sponsor their products and with Shops make them virtually enter their stores. Everything on the same platform quickly and easily.
This will eventually take away customers to Amazon and Alibaba that in the days following the announcement of the introduction of Shops have seen a decrease in the stock market.
We just have to wait for the introduction of the new e-commerce and see how they will manage the situation.