"Social commerce" is a term that may be new to many, although a Wikipedia article claims it entered the lexicon in late 2005, coined by venture capitalist David Beisel. Originally, references were limited to third-party recommendation and review sites, but the term now encompasses "collaborative commerce activities such as social shopping (co-browsing), collaborative purchasing (collective buying power), collaborative filtering (social recommendations), and collaborative funding (e.g. Crowdfunder)," according to the Wikipedia entry.

For most e-retailers, the combination of "social" and "commerce" is decidedly aspirational. Many retailers include product reviews, ratings and employee blogs on their websites, but they find it hard enough to manage the content, let alone find ways to quantify the commercial benefits.

At the NRF BIG Show last week, Bazaarvoice was demonstrating its "social commerce suites," geared toward turning social media content into tangible business for retailers. Bazaarvoice offers its solutions in SaaS (software as a service) form. The company hosts the engine that integrates the user- and employee-created content into the retailers' sites. Content in the retailer suite can take various forms: the "Ratings & Reviews" module manages customer opinions; "Ask & Answer" enables a pre-sale dialog with the retail staff as well as other customers; and "Stories" is for long-form content, generally from reviewers or from employees offering how-to advice. There is another entire suite designed for brands to improve channel sales based with Bazaarvoice-collected user-generated content.

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