The way people shop and make purchase decisions has changed dramatically with the advent of social media.

Indeed, not only does e-commerce account for 8% of all retail sales in the U.S., online retail is expected to outpace sales growth at physical stores over the next 5 years, reaching an incredible $370 billion by 2017.

And it’s not just e-commerce websites that these numbers are credited to: sales of physical goods through social networks are pegged to grow to $14 billion of U.S. sales by 2015.

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Did you know that 55 percent of consumers share their purchases on social networking sites?

Facebook leads the way by some distance, with 55 percent of users favouring that platform ahead of Twitter (22 percent) and Pinterest (14 percent), but it’s the latter that rules the roost when it comes to converting: 59 percent of Pinterest users have purchased an item they saw on the pinboarding site.

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