Not much social media support for retailers

Dutch web shops and cross channel retailers are very active on social media like Twitter, Facebook and Hyves, but so far with little success. 

The Centre for Applied Research on Economics & Management in Amsterdam looked at 5600 stores and web shops. In early 2011, 63 percent of the web-only retailers and 61 percent of the cross-channel companies were active on at least one social medium. Webshops prefer Twitter (45%) and Hyves (26%), with the same media accounting for 43 and 30 percent among the cross-channel retailers.

So far customers have not been responding to these accounts. A majority of the cross-channel retailers had fewer than one hundred followers on Twitter, Hyves or Facebook, while webshops fare even worse, with many of the businesses not even reaching double figures.