Holiday shoppers are expected to spend $38.5 billion online this year, and there's a good chance they'll want to consult with friends and family before making purchases. Now, Bing is […]

Holiday shoppers are expected to spend $38.5 billion online this year, and there's a good chance they'll want to consult with friends and family before making purchases. Now, Bing is offering a shopping list feature to its site that enables consumers to get friends' advice before they buy, and marketers may like how this sharing feature could boost awareness of their brands.

The company announced the shopping list tool in its blog. In an explanatory video, it says the shopping list module understands that consumers "use social networks when making decisions about buying products."

Users can click on a product they find through Bing and choose to add it to their custom lists. Then, a tool appears on the bottom left of users' screens displaying all of their selected products, and searchers can choose to share these with their Facebook friends.

The product builds on Bing's longstanding alliance with Facebook, which powers search result recommendations according to the Likes of users' Facebook friends. This means Facebook Likes influence clicks among Bing's monthly 1.9 billion searches, and now they may impact purchase decisions.

The shopping list module aims to help people decide between similar product offerings based on their friends' input, so marketers may want to appeal to social users to win brand loyalty this holiday season.

Beyond the potential benefits of making sales among Bing searchers, social ads are proven to boost revenue year-round. Brafton has reported that ads on social sites play into 30 million Americans' purchase decisions.  

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.