“We targeted people looking for studio flats, as well as one-/two-bedroom apartments by placing our tiny stores in the real estate section of community websites,” explains the brand.

But brands need to work out what social shopping behaviour is all about.

“People assign a different purpose and expectation to each social media channel they use,” says Masha Sajdeh, strategy sirector at Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Once marketers understand how people use social to shop, they can hone their marketing strategies and cater to different shoppers’ needs to drive engagement now and in the future.”

For brands, using social media in the wrong way can have a negative impact – 44% of social shoppers say they have stopped interacting with brands on Facebook due to lack of relevant or valuable posts.

“It’s no secret that social media is top-of-mind among brands,” says Sajdeh. “What isn’t widely known is how brands should use social media to serve the needs of shoppers.”

“Fifty years ago marketers figured out that broadcast media drove awareness and print media added depth of communication,” says Nick Jones, head of retail Marketing for Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Now we have all of these new social communication channels but no one has identified the optimal role of each.”

Opportunistic Adventurers have impulsive social shopping tendencies and demand timely and relevant deals. To connect with Opportunistic Adventurers, brands should invest in tailored deals that are “too good to pass up.

Quality Devotees use social media to shape purchasing decisions, validate choice and to feel empowered when shopping. No matter the time or research involved, Quality Devotees will find the best available product. Brands should help them build knowledge through in-depth reviews and expert opinions via blogs, forums, review sites and YouTube.

Strategic Savers use social media to comparison shop and dig for their favourite brands. And brands should validate their choices by offering custom shopping tips and ways to save money by tapping into blogs, forums and review sites.

Efficient Sprinters use social media to select the most popular items to simplify their shopping process. To connect with Efficient Sprinters brands should provide a curated list of top-selling products on their social channels and retailer websites.

The Dollar Defaulter has a single social shopping goal: find the cheapest alternative. Brands need to broadcast special deals on retailer websites… and provide the ability to share those deals with friends.

“Our new study illuminates what brands need to do to reach shoppers in their own social worlds,” says Nick Jones, head of retail Marketing for Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Understanding how and why people are using social media to shop is the first and most important step to designing a successful social media programme.”

The resulting track and music video will be released this month and available for free to music and brand fans at ConverseKorea.com.

“As Three Artists, One Song continues to champion artistic creativity globally, we couldn’t be more excited to extend this platform to the Asian market,” says Geoff Cottrill, chief marketing officer at Converse. “Korea is a leading force in music and we’re stoked to bring such a diverse group of artists together for music fans around the globe.”

“We are seeing continued passion as well as new enthusiasm for vinyl through our online store Uvinyl and the great support the format gets from those indie music shops which are still flourishing, but by harnessing the latest technology we hope this partnership with Pretty Green will lead to much wider opportunities for selling music on the High Street,” says Universal Music UK’s commercial division md Brian Rose.

“As music is a large part of Pretty Green’s heritage the collaboration with Universal Music and Simply Tap is in perfect synergy with our brand values,” says Pretty Green’s brand director Nigel Grant. “Through our label we strive to bring style, culture and music from past decades firmly into the future. We feel that by providing the virtual vinyl outlets in-store is a further complement to our brand and ideals.”

The brand says the social alarm app aims to make waking up every day an enjoyable experience, with music written by Grammy nominee Cornelius and Yoko Kanno. The app also allows users to share a record of their wake-up in the shape of the time, weather, and temperature at the moment they stop the alarm via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, RenRen and Weibo.

The second initiative, Styld.by, is Gap’s collaboration with fashion and lifestyle blogs launched earlier this year, and the platform will get new content and partners, with bloggers such as Refinery29, WhoWhatWear, Lookbook, Rue, HypeBeast and Stereogum highlighting different ways to style the brand’s new summer tees.

Be Your Own T marketing will also feature, large-scale ‘T installations’ using real T-shirts slotted onto billboards. In New York’s Times Square, people can interact with the billboard by tweeting a photo of themselves with the hashtag #beyourownt. Gap will take snaps of users’ photos on the billboard and tweet them back as well as publishing them on its Facebook page.