Dial Into Voice Commerce, a $40 Billion Market

With the evolution of smartphones and an ever-growing network, the world is becoming a smarter place for consumers. Today, the reach of smartphones and internet is growing so much such that, smart-home devices such as Alexa, Google Home have become an integral part of our life. And, courtesy of this electronic medium, commerce has a new channel – Voice Commerce. As per a study conducted by Voicebot, Voice Commerce is poised to become the third key online channel for shopping, joining web and mobile. Forecasts suggesting voice shopping will account for $40 billion in U.S. consumer spending by 2022.  Virtual Assistant Voice Commerce

Voice assistants when coupled with the shopping experience, enable consumers to purchase a product through voice without the intervention of touch screens. They enable users to complete a purchase faster and that too at any time of the day—even while taking a shower, as long as their Assistant can hear them. Marc Lore, CEO, ecommerce, Walmart said Voice Commerce will allow customers to shop in a very conversational way with a robot, in the same way that they would with a specialist, at a showroom of a retailer.

Customers need a mobile device or a smart speaker and a virtual assistant to make purchases online using voice technology. However, retailers and brands need to add voice shopping capability to their app or website to have a full shopping experience from browsing to purchasing a product. For example, using Alexa on an App or Website requires an Alexa Skill to be enabled for searching, adding to cart, checkout, making payment and finally placing order.

A few upcoming trends catching up

  • Virtual assistants are constantly analyzing and learning a consumer’s shopping patterns. Reordering products via voice can take a matter of seconds. And as it turns out, Groceries is the current top product category ordered through voice commerce.
  • As per a recent study, by Voicebot, 65% of smart speaker owners use them at least weekly and 40% of them at least daily. Increased Smart Speaker ownership is likely to drive higher use of voice through smartphones as both complement each other well.

  • 41% of adults use voice search at least once per day. Studies show that in 2020, more than half of all smartphone users will engage with voice technology on their device.

As we talk our way into the future, the convenience of speaking directly to a search engine will become more common place and Voice Search Optimization (VSO) for the world of eCommerce is quickly becoming a necessity rather than a luxury. This fundamental shift in consumer behavior will continue, especially as the technology improves and the big players continue to invest in the development of IoT devices.

SBP offers SAP Commerce (Hybris) services to help you make the best of online retailing.

Reach out to us on “getHybris@sbpcorp.com” for a demo on our portfolio of products “Omnibus Commerce for SAP Commerce”.

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