Social Media Case Study: Target’s Awesome Shop

Target has a brand new e-commerce site called the “Awesome Shop”. The standalone site is updated daily and includes social integration by using data driven from Pinterest as well as from Target.

The site has a fantastic layout and easy to read descriptions for each item. Essentially, Target has taken data from Pinterest and combined it with their own to create an easy to read layout. The user can search for items by category (food, beauty, home decor, etc) or by “top pinned” and “highly reviewed” items from the social community. Once you click an item, you see the product rating (Target’s data), the total reviews (Target’s data), and how many times it has been pinned (Pinterest data). The user also has the ability to pin the item directly from the site, and view ‘more details’ which redirects to the Target website where the user can make a direct purchase.

The standalone site with social integration is in its beta form but don’t be surprised if this becomes a permanent fixture, not only for Target, but for other big box retailers. A site with social integration allows brands to look at new data to help identify consumer trends. By using Pinterest, Target is adopting a network that they know their key demographic, 18-29 year old women, is already comfortable with.

The “Awesome Shop” website was developed in a couple of weeks by an internal team called the RAD (Rapid Accelerated Development) group. This is a small agile team that can create and test new projects. The importance of a team like this will surely rise as other companies will want to experiment with other social networks and technologies, so that their consumers will have the best socially powered shopping experience.

The fact that Target chose to integrate Pinterest speaks volumes of how they think social media can directly influence a purchase. When people ask you, “What is the ROI of social media?”, point to this example. If a brand has an engaged community and they provide the right value at the right time, consumers will BUY!

The simplicity of the site and the perfect combination of social data with 3rd party data make this a truly “Awesome Shop”.