You’re going to start to hear a lot about ’social shopping’ from a number of companies. The term is fairly self explanatory (as opposed to Web 2.0), but you’ll find that social shopping comes in many forms. The reason I’m interested in these online social shopping companies/tools is because I know that the biggest driver for me in terms of making a purchase decision is still a personal recommendation. Also, the higher the ticket price, the more I’ll talk to friends before making a purchase.

How does this translate into the comparison shopping space? Product reviews are a form of social shopping, but one problem with them is that you don’t know if you have anything in common with the person writing the review. And in the real world, isn’t that what’s important?

Comparison engines do a great job of telling you where to buy and how much to pay for a product. But answering the question of ‘what to buy’ is a different ball game. I think a lot of the engines have been set up to monetize the user as much as possible either through driving clicks to multiple merchants or through driving sponsored link (Adwords ads) clicks. But the merchants aren’t looking for just traffic, they want highly qualified leads.

Therefore, the question we have to ask with the online social shopping companies/tools is whether or not they increase the value of a comparison engine click. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find much data on the subject. However, take a small leap with me and go back to your offline shopping experience. Doesn’t it make sense to translate personal shopping recommendations and social shopping to the online world?

Over the next week, I’ll take a look at a number of social shopping companies/tools. Most of the companies are in beta so there might not be much to look at yet, but I think this is an area to pay attention to over the next year.

First stop…Kaboodle.