The study released by social shopping platform 8thBridge, analyzed the top 200 retailers on Facebook and ranked them based on their Social Commerce IQ, a system designed by 8thBridge to analyse how well companies use social platforms to drive business growth.
Sephora and Clinique charted at 4th and 5th respectively on the whole list, with MAC Cosmetics, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown and Smashbox Cosmetics all featured in the upper climbs of the leaderboard.
Above average
Overall, for the top 200 retailers, the health and beauty category charted an above average score, and based on the average for each category, health and beauty was second only to the food and drug category.
Whilst the category had less than half the number of ‘Likes’ than the overall average, it was above average when it came to fan pages with stores, suggesting that the beauty industry is clued in to using the platform for commercial purposes.
The report also found that there are key ways that retailers can use Facebook to increase interaction with consumers and drive business growth.
Social commerce strategy
Featuring details of any sales in a company’s status update was found to have a 30 percent higher rate of engagement with the consumer, whilst 35 percent of people are more likely to buy items that have been ‘Liked’ by others.
The study found a total of 35 million US Facebook users have shared a product and that 22million people have been driven to making a purchasing decision based on a Facebook recommendation, highlighting the power the social platform can have for retailers.
"Social commerce is the new frontier for the retail industry. Analysts now expect social commerce to be a $10bn industry by 2015,” said Wade Gerten, CEO of 8thBridge.
“The bullish position many are taking on social commerce is based on a belief that shopping on the social web will deliver a fundamentally better experience for customers. 8thBridge has been on a mission to reshape ecommerce around people because we believe it too," he concluded.