There's a new buzzword in town -- social apponomics -- that heralds a new stage in e-commerce. An article on the subject, from Booz & Company's IT Foresight, says that the winners in social apponomics will be "those businesses that master three elements of this domain-social media, community-based marketing and personalized and tailored applications." The Booz authors (Gregor Harter, Henning Hagen and Stefan Plenge) note that the drivers of e-commerce are shifting from monetization of online traffic to customer lifecycle management.

 

Best practices in social apponomics go beyond utilizing social media and applications, to include combining them with traditional customer experience values, such as ease of use, brand and trust, personalized offers, and high levels of support and advice. The focus here is on the lifetime value of a customer, rather than on how often a customer visits a site and spends money. Loyalty plans in this era go beyond offering points and discounts. E-tailers that excel at this strategy will create customer lock-in with "emotional, social, and technical resonance; they create personal relationships between companies and users as well as connections among users themselves," the authors say.