case study

https://doi.org/10.1177/2043886918819310

Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases 2019, Vol. 9(1) 26 –37 © Association for Information Technology Trust 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2043886918819310 Journals.sagepub.com/tcc

JITTC

Introduction

Jim Edmunds headed up the research division of an infor- mation technology research and consulting firm, based in Pasadena, California, that had built its reputation on being able to study and anticipate the impact of emerging tech- nologies. A large client of Jim’s was a consortium of firms concerned about the future of how social technologies would affect the ordering of goods, centered in the use of social media. The consortium, which included firms from a number of different industries, had come to Jim with a spe- cific interest in so-called “Order by Tweet,” where custom- ers ordered goods in the context of their Twitter use, that is, in the context of social media conversations. Although this was a relatively new, a number of different general names had been given to this phenomenon, including “social com- merce” and “hashtag commerce.” Since the client was a consortium, Jim’s analysis had to investigate the issue from a number of different perspectives to meet the needs of those of different groups within the consortium. As a result, this project had been particularly challenging. Still, Jim had been able to gather substantial information about three par- ticularly intriguing approaches used by American Express, Amazon.com and more recently the app used by Domino’s Pizza. In addition, Jim had found some information about a

related approach being used by EBay. It was clear that dif- ferent solutions were emerging, but it was not clear what were the strengths and limitations of each approach, what could go wrong or which approaches would “win out” in the end. In addition, it was not clear whether there were particular industries where this approach would work better than others. Finally, although Jim had real concerns as to whether or not “Order by Tweet” had “legs” and whether it would become a “best practice” in social commerce, he would need to take an unbiased view into this rapidly changing arena. Jim’s analysis would provide his client important insights into their future strategies.

The changing nature of commerce

The so-called social commerce was a part of electronic/ digital commerce and had been growing rapidly. In 2017, social commerce was estimated at US$123 billion. Over the

Hashtag commerce: “Order by Tweet”

Daniel E O’Leary

Abstract Recently, American Express introduced the use of “hashtag” commerce for their cardholders into Twitter using the notion of “Order by Tweet”: transactions were initiated and confirmed within Twitter using unique hashtags. Shortly after American Express, Amazon.com initiated their version of social commerce with #AmazonCart, where product requests were sent from Twitter to user’s carts in Amazon. These implementations were some of the first examples of social commerce actually executing transactions in the context of a social media platform. After American Express and Amazon, Domino’s Pizza introduced “Order by Tweet” into fast food ordering and payment. This case examines the processes that have been used as part of the processing of those transactions and allows analysis of some of the strengths and limitations of the resulting approaches.

Keywords Hashtag commerce, theory of convenience, mobile commerce, privacy paradox, social commerce, platform revolution

University of Southern California, USA

Corresponding author: Daniel E O’Leary, University of Southern California, 3660 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0441, USA. Email: [email protected]

819310TTC Journal of Information Technology Teaching CasesO’Leary

Teaching Case

O’Leary 27

time period 2017–2021, social commerce was expected to grow 34% to US$165 billion in 2021.1 Social commerce was driven, in large measure, by the increasing number of social media users and mobile commerce. For example, the percentage of Internet users who had purchased products directly via social media had increased to roughly 20% as of September 2016.2 In addition, since social commerce was often done using mobile devices, social commerce also was said to facilitate so-called “mobile commerce.” As a result, some industry experts and entrepreneurs had begun to argue that social commerce may be a key component in the ultimate success of mobile commerce (e.g. Sharp, 2015). In any case, it was clear that the nexus of social and mobile commerce seemed to be emerging as a critical area of commerce.

Although revenues were growing in both social and mobile commerce, it was still not clear what innovations social commerce would bring to electronic business and how those innovations might be used in different settings. For example, there are a broad range of social media and it was not clear which ones offer the best opportunities to leverage the capabilities of social media and yet meet busi- ness needs. As of January 2018, in a survey of worldwide marketers, the leading platforms for social commerce had been identified as Facebook (94%), Instagram (66%), Twitter (64%), Linkedin (56%) and YouTube (50%) and those platforms were likely to drive different innovations.3 In addition, it was not clear specifically how transactions are best executed in the context of particular social media or even which social media would be the preferred plat- form in the long run. Furthermore, it was not entirely clear which social media would be the best to fully leverage mobile commerce environment capabilities. As a result, innovative and concerned enterprises began experimenting with different capabilities.

In 2013, American Express, interested in exploring the use of social commerce as an approach to engaging its card members, took part in a trial use of “Order by Tweet” driven by “hashtag” commerce. As part of the process, orders for goods originated in Twitter, using a hashtag “#Buy***,” where the name of the specific goods was used instead of ***. Potentially, this would allow American Express the ability to more fully engage some of their cardholders and reach other potential customers through Twitter. In 2014, Amazon.com began exploring using hashtags, embedded in Twitter tweets to allow their customers to order goods on Amazon in order to extend its reach and change the shop- ping experience. Using messages from Twitter, customers would use #AmazonCart to place items into their Amazon shopping carts. In 2014, EBay also began to investigate the use of hashtags, announcing that they would start using “smart hashtags.” When EBay visitors were on the site of a product, by clicking the Twitter (or other social media) but- ton, a hashtag would be generated that could be sent to fol- lowers directing them to the particular product. Most

recently, Domino’s Pizza began using Twitter messages and hashtags to sell fast food.

However, there was more than just “hashtag commerce,” instead there seems to be a rapid evolution occurring in electronic commerce. Now there was “social commerce” and so-called “conversation commerce” that linked com- merce to conversations. Those conversations were occur- ring in classic computing environments. But increasingly, commerce was being linked to mobile devices, emerging as mobile commerce.

Background: social commerce, hashtag commerce, mobile commerce and conversation commerce

Social and mobile commerce, both relatively new terms and concepts, are becoming increasingly important over time as firms reach out to potential customers in different settings. The use of Twitter and hashtags for products is facilitating corporate experimentation with both social and mobile commerce and related issues of hashtag commerce and conversational commerce.

Social commerce

Social commerce has a number of definitions, but recently it was referred to as “A digital initiative that uses social media to assist in the buying and selling of products and services.”4 A lot was expected of social commerce. In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg said, “If I had to guess, social commerce is next to blow up.”5

The term social commerce, originated by Rubel (2006), initially referred to a feature that allowed users to provide reviews of products. One early innovation included an ordering capability when Facebook developed their “Facebook Gifts” services, which was designed to sell gift cards for companies such as Starbucks and iTunes. In addi- tion, Facebook introduced their “Buy Button,” with “Auto- fill” for automatically populating billing information into shopping apps and targeting ads to users (e.g. Constine, 2014). More recently, there are posts from which shopping can be done on Instagram and “buy it” buttons on Pinterest.

These and other developments allowed companies to begin to engage and influence customers, who are con- nected to other individuals, whom in turn can influence oth- ers. Furthermore, developments have led to the transactions taking place in the context of the particular social media platform. As a result of these developments, social com- merce has begun to take on a different meaning than its initial definition of simply providing and sharing reviews also to include transaction processing.

In a classic electronic commerce (e-commerce) environ- ment, the user goes to some website, examines potential

28 Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases 9(1)

goods and then chooses from among the alternatives, gen- erates an order and then pays for that order (O’Leary, 2000). However, there are some major differences between order- ing from a website, such as Amazon.com, and ordering in a social commerce setting. With social commerce, the order takes place in the context of the social media, that is, Twitter and Facebook. As a result, the order takes place as part of social interaction, as part of conversations, relatively unob- trusively. In addition, transaction information is exchanged in the same context. As a result, an order must be captured, and arrangements for paying for it, must take place in the same social media context. Accordingly, there are some important implications associated with social commerce. For example, there is a “public” aspect to transactions in social commerce. Depending on how it is configured, in a social business setting, “friends” may be informed of pur- chases that are made. Furthermore, others “external” to the transaction can access information about the transaction. People other than friends may be aware of purchases that are made. As a result, some of the asymmetries of informa- tion typically associated with transactions between differ- ent parties can disappear with social commerce.

Conversational commerce

“Conversational commerce” also recently has emerged. Conversational commerce has been characterized as the exchange of information and the acceptance of orders and payments within the context of a conversation: “Conversational commerce is about delivering convenience, personalization, and decision support while people are on the go, with only partial attention to spare.”6 Conversational commerce likely is one of many branches that are part of the evolution of social commerce and mobile commerce that ultimately will be embedded in e-commerce. Conversational commerce can be based in social media or other digital set- tings, such as email and product commentaries. According to at least one commentator, many expected that 2018 would be the year of conversational commerce.7

Hashtag commerce

At the most basic level, hashtag commerce relates to the use of hashtags to facilitate and generate commerce across a range of economic situations. As a result, one definition of hashtag commerce is the delivery of commerce capabili- ties using hashtags, typically in the context of a social media. Hashtag commerce involves users including hashtags in their communications in order to facilitate a range of economic activities, ranging from simply making others aware of an economic opportunity (e.g. a product) to initiating and completing transactions. Since transactions are executed in social media, typically, there must be some structure developed independent of the social media. For example, user credit card information likely is set up on a secured site and linked to the social media site.

Hashtags potentially played a critical role in social com- merce. Bobowski (2013) suggested that hashtags were breathing life back into social commerce. Hashtags were versatile; they can be used in different social communica- tion settings, ranging from social media to email to reports or even verbal exchanges.

In addition to American Express and Amazon.com, Chirpify had been a pioneer in hashtag commerce and had been the source of multiple experiments (e.g. Chaney, 2014; Empson, 2013). As an example, according to Soper (2014), Chirpify had developed hashtag commerce so that users could gather information from a television ad to order a product: “Brands include a hashtag with their advertising campaign, and if consumers use that hashtag in a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram post, they’ll be sent a link to a page with a purchasing form or other related information.”

Mobile commerce

The term “mobile commerce” was originally coined in 1997 by Kevin Duffey at the Global Mobile Commerce Forum, to mean “the delivery of electronic commerce capa- bilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere, via wireless technology.”8 According to Criteo (2015), mobile now accounts for roughly 30% of all e-commerce, but in a few years, it is expected to account for roughly 50% of transactions in the United States. With such potential vol- ume, companies are interested in making mobile commerce easy for potential participants. Recently, mobile commerce has continued its rapid growth. In 2017, the number of mobile commerce transactions had reportedly increased by 13% since 2016.9

Summary

There is substantial overlap among each of these forms of commerce, as seen in an illustration representing a rough set of the relationships between these multiple types of commerce in Figure 1. Hashtag commerce can be done as a part of conversations and as part of social commerce, but can be used as part of more formal approaches. Conversational commerce can be part of social commerce, but conversations need not be part of social commerce. All of hashtag commerce, conversational commerce and social commerce can be done in mobile or more tradi- tional environments.

Since social commerce, hashtag commerce, conversa- tional commerce and mobile commerce are all relatively new; there is limited knowledge of best practices. As a result, firms are exploring some of the best ways to lever- age these different forms of emerging commerce and gener- ate potential best practices for their use. The efforts by Chirpify, American Express, Amazon, EBay and Domino’s Pizza are among the first proposed approaches.

Two of the most visible approaches to hashtag com- merce were generated by American Express and Amazon,

O’Leary 29

both in conjunction with Twitter. In addition, EBay also has pursued hashtag commerce, from a different approach than either American Express or Amazon, while Domino’s Pizza initiated hashtag ordering for fast food. The next four sec- tions describe those four efforts.

American Express’ use of hashtag commerce through Twitter

American Express partnered with Twitter, and with other companies, such as Sony, to sell goods to their cardhold- ers, by offering their customers purchasing opportunities enabled through Twitter. In those offerings, cardholders would first link their American Express credit card to their Twitter account using the “Amex Sync” page (Figure 2). This process would require a legitimate account with American Express that would be used for billing pur- poses and a Twitter account that would be used for messaging.

Account syncing process

From the sync page, users could go to the favorites list of AMEX in order to determine the hashtags associated with particular potential purchases. Using those hashtags, they could purchase those goods via Twitter.10 Because their American Express card was linked to the Twitter account, all that users needed to do to make a purchase was to either retweet a particular hashtag or simply reply the hashtag Figure 1. Relationship between different commerce.

Figure 2. Portal to sync Twitter and American Express accounts. Source: https://sync.americanexpress.com/twitter/Index (accessed 12 January 2018).

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back to American Express’ Twitter account. As noted by Bradley Minor, vice president of digital communications strategy for American Express,

Card members sync their eligible cards at sync. americanexpress.com/twitter and tweet special hashtags to buy products from top brands. We send an @reply asking them to confirm their purchase. Once they do that, we then send a confirmation tweet and email, and the product is shipped. (Warnick, 2013)

Since American Express’ approach was embedded in Twitter, it allowed them to experiment with both hashtag and mobile commerce: Twitter frequently is used with mobile devices. For example, as noted by Tsukayama (2013), “The deal allows Twitter to try out the mobile e-commerce market—the company recently said that 60 percent of its 200 million active users log in through a mobile device at least once a month.”

Portal and example

The American Express and Twitter portal (Figure 2) pro- vides more than just a syncing capability. The portal offers the ability to sign up for Twitter and to become an American Express cardholder.

The portal provides assurances and indicates that American Express Card information will not be shared with Twitter. In addition, the portal tells the user to

• Explore—“Find offers from brands you love—for dining, shopping and more”;

• Select—“Add as many offers as you like to your Card by tweeting after specific hashtags”;

• Save—“Use your Card to pay and see the savings add up as statement credits on your bill.”

An example of a product offering through a tweet is given in Figure 3, where the hashtag is #BuyActionCamPack. The information in the tweet pro- vides the product being sold, the price, the expiration date and the hashtag used for the order. The tweet also captures date and time information and the number of retweets and likes for the tweet.

Process

Figure 4 illustrates the type of exchange that would take place between the customer and American Express in order to execute the transaction. The order starts with the credit cardholder using the hashtag #Buy . . .. Then, “Amex Offers” indicates that the user needs to send another tweet with the hashtag #Confirm . . .. After hashtag information has been received, the user gets another Figure 3. #BuyActionCamPack—16 February 2013.

Figure 4. Typical exchange of tweets in social commerce at American Express.

O’Leary 31

message saying that there will be an email sent to them with additional details.

Characteristics of Twitter messages and responses

The Twitter messages for this trial were all initiated in a 2-day time period as can be seen in Table 1. The products varied in price from US$15 to US$179.99 per item. In addition, the products were discounted at different rates. The corresponding responses to the different offers also were apparent, in terms of both the number of retweets and likes.

The verbal responses in the Twitter messages from the users also seemed to vary substantially across the different products. As examples, three sets of responses are provided in Tables 2 to 4.

The responses to the #BuyKindleFire (Table 2) illustrate that the process to use the hashtags to purchase the goods was not widely understood by the users. For example, one user asked “so how does this hashtag purchasing work?” This table provides some of the exchanges between poten- tial participants. Table 3 suggests that the potential buyers

were particularly interested in the gift card. Table 4 illus- trates the reaction to #BuyActionCamPack and some con- cerns for the process.

Amazon’s use of social commerce through Twitter

Amazon also partnered with Twitter and a number of ven- dors to use a similar approach. As an example, Figure 5 illustrates the use of what was referred to as #AmazonCart and indicates that the goods could have been added to the customer’s Amazon Cart while the customer is in Twitter (e.g. Olivarez-Giles, 2014).

As noted by Bensal (2014),

#AmazonCart is a really cool way to add items to your cart if you are on vacation or away from your computer and liked an item to buy. This way you can add them to your cart and when you get back, it will be waiting in your cart.

Accordingly, this approach also appears to integrate hashtag commerce, social commerce, mobile commerce and classic e-commerce.

Table 1. #Buy.

Item Date Time Retweets Likes Price Discount11

#BuyAmexGiftCard 11 February 2013 US$15.00 0.60 #BuyKindleFireHD 13 February 2013 9:09 337 77 US$149.99 0.75 #BuyUrbanZenBracelet 13 February 2013 9:09 12 6 US$80.00 #BuyXbox360Bundle 13 February 2013 9:10 30 15 US$179.99 0.75 #BuyXboxController 13 February 2013 9:10 26 18 US$29.99 #BuyActionCamPack 13 February 2013 11:00 33 19 US$179.99 0.86

Table 2. Selected Twitter responses to #BuyKindleFire.

@AmericanExpress Many, many THANKS for this Awesome Deal!!! I jumped on this deal and am now a proud happy owner of this Wonderful Kindle!!! @AmericanExpress So how does this hashtag purchasing work? @AmericanExpress #BuyKindleFireHD @AmexSync I’m trying to add my info, but it won’t submit @jeevagunta, Hi Abraham. Are your Tweets protected? ^Courtney @AskAmex they are not protected. @AskAmex Got it now. Thank you very much. @AskPamelaGail You should have received a confirmation email from Amex when successfully syncing your Card. MB @AmericanExpress @AskPamelaGail.got a reply that said offer no konger available @Sun4flower @AmericanExpress ouch . . . mine got ordered . . . @AmericanExpress #BuyKindleFireHD @AmexSync #ConfirmKindleFireHD @NicksRottevnm You’ve already Tweeted #BuyKindleFireHD, pls check for a reply from @AmexSync. Terms: http://amex.co/ W4XqIb (accessed 12 January 2018). @AmericanExpress Is the Kindle Fire the only item currently for sale within the Twitter/ Amex sync program? I’d love to try it out! @AmericanExpress Do you know if this Kindle is with or without special offers on the lock screen? @AmericanExpress WHY would I want to sync my private card with public twitter? What a terrible promo. @AmericanExpress is this the Kindle Fire with advertisements? Hope not . . .

32 Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases 9(1)

Portal

Figure 6 illustrates the portal that users would employ as part of the process to link their Amazon and Twitter accounts and summarizes the approach in greater detail.

The implementation at Amazon.com was a bit different than the American Express implementation, in that when a linked user tweets a hashtag, the item was only put into their Amazon Cart. The goods are purchased in Amazon, but using this approach, the user does not have to leave Twitter to put the item in their cart. Furthermore, they would determine whether or not to buy the item whenever they checked their cart out at Amazon.

In addition, the portal indicates that “you’re about to authorize your first app!” As a result, this suggests that after the user implements this app, there are likely to be other applications that would tie back to the user’s Twitter account, expanding Twitter to other capabilities.

The portal also provides information as to what Amazon will and will not be able to read from the user’s account. For example, Amazon will be able to see who the user fol- lows, but will not be able to access direct messages or the user’s password.

Example

Figure 7 provides an example illustrating the process at Amazon.com using the setting initiated in Figure 5. In par- ticular, the user needs to start the process by enabling their account to be able to use the hashtags. That process links the Twitter account and user’s Amazon account. After that link is established, then the user needs only reply with the hashtag #AmazonCart to the offer of interest. At that point, the offer would be put in the customer’s cart. The user is given more detail about the purchase in a URL link if they are interested.

Table 4. Selected Twitter responses to #BuyActionCamPack.

@AmericanExpress Extra steps, public broadcast of purchase and Amex use, pending delivery, etc, for 10% off?! No thanks. @AmericanExpress I guess supporting the profits of the credit card industry is worth a free toaster. @AmericanExpress or go on @amazon and pay the same @AmericanExpress CAN YALL GO LIKE MY FAN PAGE TO SHOW RESPECT TO DA MOVEMENT . . . @AmericanExpress Any current specials on laptops? Also could it apply to the PRG & Business Plat? Isn’t this the standard price ?@AmericanExpress @Thenetsguy Standard price for camera, not camera + headband. @AmericanExpress Have a Blessed day @AmericanExpress Why would I buy any #sony #rootkit product? Just say NO to #sony and (sp)#amex @AmericanExpress Promote some new items already!

Table 3. Selected Twitter responses to #BuyAmexGiftCard.

@washingtonpost Might want to fix the typo in this article: http://wapo.st/X5lElz. Should be #BuyAmexGiftCard . . . not #ButAmexGiftCard . . . @AmericanExpress #AmexSync #buyamexgiftcard @AmericanExpress I want to #BuyAmexGiftCard #buyamexgiftcard$25 #buyamexgiftcard x3 #BuyAmexGiftCard 25 this must be right. @TerribleTaebo I love you. #BuyAmexGiftCard #BuyAmexGiftCard

Figure 5. #AmazonCart.

O’Leary 33

Multiple platforms

Although American Express had a strong web presence, there really were no goods for sale on their site. As a result, there was no real concern of having customers go from one site to another. However, Amazon’s usage of Twitter had generated some potential controversy, particularly inter- nally. Should Amazon be using Twitter or should they focus the customer on the Amazon site? Would it be social or hashtag commerce if Amazon did not involve a social media site? These concerns raised two bigger issues: Should Amazon should try to integrate with other e-com- merce sites? If Amazon did not, could they even do social or hashtag commerce?

EBay’s smart hashtags

In March 2014, EBay announced that they were going to begin to use “smart hashtags” (Kung, 2014). A visitor to an EBay page could send a tweet (and other social media) to their followers. While on the specific page, the visitor would simply click on the Twitter button and the system would create a tweet as in Figure 8. The tweet would have three different phrases, delineated with hashtags. In the example, there is a hashtag for the title of the original EBay

Figure 6. Portal for Amazon.com authorization. Source: https://twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=mTzs2AAAAAAACHb2AAABUonnzB0 (accessed 12 January 2018).

Figure 7. Process for #AmazonCart.

34 Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases 9(1)

site, one for the manufacturer of the product and one direct link to the EBay site.

EBay’s approach was different than those used by both American Express and Amazon. Instead of leading directly to an order, only information about a site would be sent. However, as noted by one observer, “This is great for my eBay niche sites. Helps make it easier for my . . . tweets to get dispersed.”12 In addition, unlike American Express and Amazon, Ebay’s approach kept the user on the Ebay platform.

Evolution of the “Order by Tweet” concept

The evolution of the order/pay by Tweet concept had been fast. Initially, American Express had used Twitter to gen- erate orders. Amazon had taken it a step slower, and rather than generating an order, instead, responding to the Tweet would result in the order being put in an Amazon shop- ping basket. EBay’s approach had primarily put the focus on recommending the item, telling others about it, but not buying it.

There had been experimentation, but both American Express and Amazon eliminated transaction processing in the context of social media. The most recent step was then to provide the user with a discount coupon, not unlike a Groupon approach. But this was not the end of “Order by Tweet.”

Domino’s “Order by Tweet” and global fast food trends

At roughly the same time that American Express, Amazon and EBay had stopped experimenting with “Order by Tweet,” Domino’s Pizza and a food delivery service had adopted the process for fast food. As part of their cam- paign to “order anywhere,” Domino’s Pizza allowed users to “Order Domino’s by Tweet.”13 In particular, users can order with the hashtag #Easyorder or a pizza emoji. As with the other approaches, the user needs to set up a (pizza) profile, sign up for Tweet ordering and then use Twitter to order pizza as seen in Figure 9. Some comment- ers (e.g. Wealthy Wages, 2017) have argued that because of their order by tweet and other ordering approaches, that Domino’s Pizza is “killing the competition.” In that same

commentary, Domino’s was credited with “understand- ing” that “socially technological advances” are changing the way that we order pizza.

However, Domino’s was not the only fast food–related firm using order by tweet. In addition, there seemed to be an emerging global trend to use order by tweet in a range of fast food settings. One application that caught Edmunds’ eye was the use of order by tweet in India by Foodpanda (Prasad, 2017), an online food delivery service. As a result, it was becoming clear that order by tweet was not limited to North America but was increasingly embedded in global commerce and providing new businesses with innovative ways to do business.

Privacy and the privacy paradox

As Jim was documenting his analysis, he openly wondered about privacy. Harris (2013) and others had suggested that order by tweet could lead to a privacy sacrifice. Accordingly, Edmunds had a number of emerging questions. Would peo- ple be concerned about the notion that hashtag commerce was largely open for others to see? Would people be con- cerned that others could see what they were buying?

However, others around Jim suggested that millennials were willing to make commerce social, so that privacy

Figure 8. Example of EBay smart hashtag.

Figure 9. Example of Domino’s order by hashtag.

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would not be an issue. There had been an interesting dis- cussion on the “privacy paradox” in the research division (see also Barnes, 2006; Taddicken, 2014; Wittes and Liu, 2015). The privacy paradox suggested that while users might express concern for the privacy, their actual behav- ior might not reflect those same concerns. In addition, rather than a loss of privacy, some at the office in Pasadena were arguing that order by tweet could result in the trans- mission of “new information” and generate a “new wave of communication.”

Theory of convenience and “Order by Tweet”

Before Edmunds would bring his findings to the consor- tium, he felt he needed an organizing theme to help explain the potential success of the phenomena of order by tweet, beyond the privacy paradox. After consulting with others in the team, Edmunds came up with what he called the “the- ory of convenience.” He had heard about the “Theory of Convenience” in voting (e.g. Gronke et al., 2008). But there did not seem to be an instantiation of this notion when it came to buying goods or purchasing goods. As a result, Edmunds planned on couching his analysis behind the “the- ory of convenience for buying.” In particular, Edmunds would propose that the potential for the success of order by tweet was because of its convenience. Increasingly, people would be using mobile devices and they needed for pur- chases to work easily. Purchases needed to be convenient, and order by tweet was clearly convenient to anyone famil- iar with their mobile phone and the ordering apps.

Difficulty of information technology adoption

Edmunds had seen American Express, Amazon and EBay experiment with order/pay by Tweet, but not continue with the adoption of the technology. He had also seen while many users were able to use the approach, some users did not easily catch-on to using the approach. Was this an app issue? Was it user knowledge of or comfort with apps? Were some groups of users just more facile with apps?

This adoption of information technology was different than many of the examples that Edmunds had seen in the past. In this case, the users were not employees who could be told to use the app. Instead, the users were customers who could choose whether or not to use the app and whether or not to order the product.

Next steps

Jim’s analysis of American Express, Amazon and EBay’s use of social/mobile commerce using Twitter had uncov- ered a number of issues. A committee was formed and you

were named to be a key member. As part of being on that committee, you have been designated to prepare a report of your findings on these uses of hashtag commerce.

Your report should address a number of issues, including the following:

• Edmunds had documented the use and approach of American Express, Amazon, EBay and Domino’s Pizza. He could not help but wonder why the approach seemingly was working with Domino’s but it appeared that American Express, Amazon and EBay were no longer interested. Was it the industry? Was it the customer? Was it the privacy of the trans- actions? Was it the need for convenience? Or was it the difficulty of pushing technology in a new direc- tion? Would American Express and Amazon be back in the future? What should he tell the consortium?

• What do you think about Edmunds’ three “organiz- ing themes” of the privacy paradox, the convenience theory of purchasing and the difficulty of IT adop- tion? Do they make sense? Would they help mem- bers of the consortium understand order by tweet?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the so-called hashtag commerce? More broadly, what were the advantages and disadvantages of imple- menting a commerce capability within a “social media” platform?

• How would firms ultimately evaluate the success of the use of “hashtag” commerce? What analytics might they use to drive that evaluation?

• Twitter was a public forum. Would there be any potential issues associated with the privacy of the customers?

• What business intelligence information could be teased from this set of social commerce activities? Was the business intelligence that could be gathered the same as in other purchasing or commerce chan- nels or was it different?

• How could the approaches used by American Express, Amazon.com, Domino’s Pizza and EBay be extended? How might other social media beyond Twitter be used?

• In American Express’ implementation, customers could provide the information by either replying to or retweeting a hashtag. What were the implications of customers using those two different approaches?

• As seen in the implementation by American Express, responses by users to the different opportunities seemed to vary substantially. Edmunds was inter- ested in what were some of the potential factors driv- ing those differences in responses.

• Amazon and others were interested in the implica- tions associated with using a platform “different” than their own platform. What was at stake if cus- tomers used Twitter to place orders, rather than the

36 Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases 9(1)

Amazon.com platform? Would the approach make American Express a competitor of Amazon?

• There were emerging questions as to how this approach would lead to monetization for Twitter: What was in the arrangement for Twitter? What would Twitter gain if it were to become a platform for commerce?

Conclusion

“Order by Tweet” is exemplary of the emerging trend of social commerce, in general and hashtag commerce specifi- cally. Recently, at least four firms have used different ver- sions of “Order by Tweet”: American Express, Amazon, EBay and Domino’s Pizza. Order by tweet was couched in three different theories: privacy paradox, the theory of con- venience buying and the difficulty of IT adoption.

Analysis of the different approaches to order by tweet brings out a number of issues: What are the advantages and disadvantages? How will firms evaluate the success of hashtag commerce? Is the privacy of the participants affected? Does hashtag commerce provide a new form of communication? Why did people respond differently to the purchasing opportunities at American Express? What was the impact of potentially integrating different e-commerce platforms, for example, Amazon and Twitter? If “order by twitter” had “legs,” what would be the impact on Twitter? Will hashtag commerce emerge as a “best practice” of mobile commerce? Why would industry impact potential use of order/payment by Tweet?

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the substantial, helpful and insightful comments of the ICIS associate editor and the two anonymous referees on an earlier version of this paper. In addi- tion, the author would like to thank the anonymous Senior Editor at JIT-TC for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1. http://www.adweek.com/digital/harald-merckel-guest-post- 5-best-tools-for-social-commerce-in-2018/

2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/216302/social-commerce -penetration-usa/

3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/259379/social-media -platforms-used-by-marketers-worldwide/

4. h t t p s : / / w w w. r e f e r r a l s a a s q u a t c h . c o m / w h a t - i s - s o c i a l -commerce/

5. h t t p : / / w w w. a d w e e k . c o m / d i g i t a l / s o c i a l - c o m m e r c e -infographic/

6. https://medium.com/chris-messina/conversational-com- merce-92e0bccfc3ff#.bfe9qkbmi

7. http://blog.newstore.com/will-2018-be-the-year-of-conver- sational-commerce-it-should

8. http://cryptome.org/jya/glomob.htm 9. https://www.criteo.com/insights/mobile-commerce-q4-2017/ 10. https://sync.americanexpress.com/twitter/FAQ 11. http://dealswelike.boardingarea.com/2013/02/13/reminder-

discounted-items-via-american-expresstwitter-starts-now/ 12. h t t p : / / w w w . v 7 n . c o m / f o r u m s / o n l i n e - b u s i n e s s -

forum/362548-ebay-launches-smart-hashtags-social-com- merce.html

13. https://anyware.dominos.com/

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Author biography

Daniel E O’Leary is on the faculty at the University of Southern California. He is the former editor of IEEE Intelligent Systems and the current editor of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management. Professor O’Leary is the author of the Cambridge University Press book entitled, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. He has written a number of information technology– based cases, including “Sysco’s Best Business Practices.”