Most social shopping done by mums

There is an overwhelming majority of women who buy items, products and services direct from Facebook. The social media giants have 850 million members, but only 1.5 million shoppers, and those are almost all women. Eighty per cent of people who buy from Facebook are usually mums that are at home through the day and it’s been found that cutesy baby clothes or baby items are the most commonly-bought items. Whether it’s funny baby T-shirts, bows for their children’s hair or cuddly toys, it’s the female crowd that splash the cash the most. These are the same people that play social games such as Farmville and the latest app to have millions of users, Draw Something.

Men also buy from Facebook, but it’s been found that they usually buy T-shirts that are funny or are helping charity organisations raise funds through sales. Facebook sales are growing at a rate of 20% each month and it won’t be long before people are heading to fan pages and groups to see what others are buying and reading the reviews of existing customers. As major brands have yet to provide Facebook shops as it’s more small to medium-sized businesses, there is a push to incorporate more than just fan pages for major retailers who are encouraged to use Facebook as a portal for selling their items rather than people ‘liking’ them.

The majority of Facebook sales are paid for by PayPal, the online processor, the social network giants expect people to change to Facebook credits to pay for their items in the same way as gamers do when they pay for games on the site. As Facebook takes 30% of the revenue from games and in-game features, it’s expected that vendors would not pay this high a fee for selling their products through the site.