Let’s face it, we all secretly have a Pinterest obsession. Businesses, especially retailers, are beginning to notice the trends and are changing their business models to match. Social media and the rise of the internet have forced business to change their decade-old business models of simple marketing and pricing to incorporate the new advances in technology. By being able to see what consumers are doing, like pushing out tweets, constant data sharing on Instagram and Facebook, and now browsing via Pinterest, businesses can better interact with their specific demographic.
Back to Pinterest; this past summer, a great switch occurred. J Crew took its usual glossy print catalogs and made them virtual. The business decided to post their entire fall line on Pinterest, allowing any of their followers or even just the millions of Pinterest surfers to pre-order clothes even before they came out in stores and catalog. By doing this, Pinterest has begun to become a social platform for retailers, and J Crew gets the advantage of seeing how their newly released items will sell even before they hit the shelves. This is the beginning of “Shopinterest”, Pinterest shopping.
After the success of this initial launch into the Pinterest shopping sphere, other businesses have decided to hop on the bandwagon. The brand new “Awesome Shop” by Target is one of the first to embrace the Pinterest community of shoppers. Due to the recently over publicized scandals Target has been facing, their sales have plummeted. To bounce back, they have opened a special Pinterest compilation called the Target Awesome Shop.
This “shop” has just opened and is still in the developing stages, but what is exciting is that this shop allows you to see the top pinned items and shop them. You can shop by category if you know exactly what you want, or just look through items that are the most pinned. Either way, Pinterest shopping seems like the newest, coolest way to shop online. Not only that, but the fact that retailers have changed their ancient business models, ones that have led to success and that have stayed the same for years, is something to take note of. Could this change be the beginning of many? With the increase of different social media platforms, who knows what else will be the next outlet for change!
Photo Credits:
http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05…
http://www.sffashtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ShopinterestLogo.png
http://www.searchforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Target-Awesome-Sho…