What Happened
Dior has become the first luxury brand to dabble in social commerce by hosting a flash sale on China’s leading messaging app WeChat. The French fashion brand launched its WeChat shop on August 1st and promoted a limited edition of its Lady Dior bag via its official WeChat subscription account and WeChat Moments, a Facebook News Feed-like stream of social posts that WeChat integrated into the messaging app. The bag, priced at 28,000 yuan ($4,210), sold out within a day.
Social commerce is one of the leading features of WeChat, and it has taken off remarkably among Chinese mobile users. Dior is far from the first brand to host a successful flash sale event on WeChat. Previously, local brands such as smartphone maker Xiaomi and skincare brand WIS Professional have seen great results from their social commerce efforts on WeChat.
What Brands Need To Do
Although messaging app-based social commerce has yet to take off in the U.S., leading messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Kik have been working to emulate WeChat’s success and building out social commerce features in their apps. Some brands, such as fashion brands J.Crew and Madewell, have started experimenting with flash sales on Instagram. As more and more consumers are opting for messaging apps as their main communication channel, brands need to follow the audience and start experimenting with social commerce to sell directly to consumers.
For more information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on messaging apps and other conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.
Source: China Daily