A headline in this mornings paper says, “Facebook commerce struggles to catch on“.

The article says, “Last April, Gamestop Corp. opened a store on Facebook to generate sales among the 3.5 million-plus customers who’d declared themselves “fans” of the video game retailer. Six months later, the store was quietly shuttered.“

It cites that Gap Inc. , J.C. Penney Co. and Nordstrom Inc. have also opened and closed storefronts on Facebook Inc.’s social networking site.

Gamestop said its customers had no reason to shop on facebook as shopping on their own site was just as easy as shopping on facebook.

I would think that they could have bolstered sales on facebook by simply having a few “facebook only” sales that were advertised on their own sites as well as facebook.

Maybe I’m over-simplifying the problem, but it seems to me that there was a solution if they cared to do it.

Will the big dogs pulling out of facebook cause you to change your strategies, or do you think facebook is still a viable market for your clients?

Or, if you are the marketer, does this change you thinking?

@warrenveach

as per usual, i think it will depend on the clients. i was reading yesterday while doing some edgerank research, that a brand sees diminishing returns in post impressions as the fan base grows. so if their posts are getting lost, and fans aren’t coming back to the page, it’s gonna be tough to build that shop awareness. i’m wondering if it didn’t work better to shift their resources and dollars to targeted, time-sensitive offers via facebooks ads. 

now for smaller businesses without a huge e-commerce site, it seems like a smallshop on facebook could still make some real sense – especially for targeted sales (as you mention) and perhaps for the top bestsellers to help expose new fans to the best of the best. 

thanks for posting this – i’m also personally interested as i’ve been considering an online shop for my husband’s prints. we do not have an e-commerce site because we’re just too small. so i’m debating between an etsy shop, or a targeted facebook page with an integrated e-commerce tab. i’ve yet to do a lot of research on which platform etc…