Procter & Gamble is going to develop e-commerce and has launched six new Facebook stores for its Tide, Gillette, Olay, Gain, CoverGirl, Luvs and Febreze brands. 

Now the so called f-commerce follows the last year pilot store launched by the company selling 29 different P&G products with the help of Amazon. P&G began f-commerce last year with its Pampers brand fan page, which also offered products from several other P&G brands without leaving Facebook, using Amazon as the sole retailer carrying out those sales.

Ad Age says that fulfillment of items purchased within Facebook on the P&G brand pages comes through P&G’s own e-store that opened last year, but the page layout leaves space for other retailers to join as alternatives. And it is Walmart.com that is considering linking with P&G’s Facebook pages as an option now.

It appears to be the first time a brand has allowed multiple retail partners for fulfillment of orders on Facebook.

«Social-network selling is an extension of our overall focus on innovation and brand building,» P&G spokeswoman Tonia Elrod said. «We expect testing commerce via social networks like Facebook will help us accelerate e-commerce growth as consumers buy more of our categories online.»

Facebook brand sites use the Distributed Commerce Platform from Columbus, Ohio-based Resource Interactive to complete the transactions, while the previously utilized Amazon platform had some quite poor technical issues that didn’t make it easy for customers to shop.

While Walmart.com is still doubting whether joining the P&G f-commerce effort or not, it has boosted its profile within the social network recently by adding Facebook ‘like’ buttons to item listings throughout Walmart.com. That allows a customer e.g. to suggest a gift to a friend.