'Social commerce is revolutionizing every consumer cohort and business'

Social media has revolutionized the world of business, impacting every aspect of the brand’s journey. At the e4m GroupM Programmatic Summit, industry experts came together to discuss social media's disruptive effects and how it has evolved with time.

The panel comprised Puneeth Bekal, Director Marketing, Mastercard; Shaktipriyo Sikdar, Programmatic Industry Expert; Shaurya Tyagi, Head Digital Marketing and Loyalty, Reliance and Tanvi Amladi, Digital Precision Marketing Lead, Beiersdorf, Nivea while the session moderator was Vishal Shah, Managing Partner, EssenceMediacom India. 

The discussion revolved around different nuances of social commerce and how it is evolving with time. Speaking about her experience, Amladi of Nivea said, “The power of Social and Discovery Commerce especially coming from a brand like Nivea, where we are heavily drenched in skincare, the opportunity for us is huge. We've seen consumers are pretty much online with their entire journey of discovery and exploration happening in the digital space today. We have scaled up our digital and full-funnel efforts in terms of where the consumer is. In India, it is still very nascent today one of the aspects it consumers are still hesitating to shop on platforms they are not habituated to.” 

Talking about his experience and how the space is developing, Tyagi said, “The business that I represent primarily sells to grocery merchants. It is believed that they don’t use social media; however, what we have seen is that the acquisition of merchants happens majorly on social media and the retention is also happening on the same. We have seen the journey of sending a physical flyer to the merchant’s shop to making a static post on social media.”

Sikdar spoke about how everyone be it the brand or the consumer has a gazillion of choices today. He said, “As consumers today, we are spoilt for choice in every product today, and as marketers, we are also spoilt with platforms to reach out to consumers. It becomes very important to us that the audience that we are targeting on the platforms that I am going to use, use those platforms at scale so before even starting their purchase journey. Am I able to introduce them to the products that I offer? It is not limited to one sector, it is happening across sectors.” 

Bekal spoke about how relevancy plays an important role in today’s world. He said, “ India today has got the youngest GenZ population and younger millennials. They are mobile-first. The research today proves that there is a significant time spent by the population on online shopping. People even spend time browsing their future purchases, we are fortunate to be in the right of the centre of the consumers and the product categories. Relevancy plays an important role, engagement or purchase will only happen if there is a relevancy between the brand and the consumer. The back end also plays a key role in enabling the power to bring the right consumer to the table.”