VOICE: What the analysts don't get about conversational commerce.

This past summer Priya Anand of The Information published a well-researched report about the paucity of product purchasing done by Amazon’s Alexa users in 2018. 

 The key data point:  only two percent of those with Alexa-enabled devices made voice-directed product purchases in 2018 – and within that small group, only 10 percent made a second purchase.

 That’s not even a blip on the retail revenue radar screen.

 And certainly not a big step toward the $40B in voice commerce by 2022 estimated by Business Insider.

 The suggestion:  conversational commerce = hype. 

 Hardly.  

 Those with some experience in retailing know that product purchasing is a sub-set of a larger set of decision behaviors known as shopping.

 And it’s across the entire shopping journey that the value of voice in commerce must be measured.

 Consider the impact of the internet upon shopping.  According to recent figures from Statista, roughly 54 percent of all US retail revenues in 2019 will be directly influenced by internet-based sources.  That’s annual value impact of more than $2 trillion, a value realized through decision-making driven by search, by reviews and ratings and social media and pricing comparisons.

It’s also a value that continues to create new industry winners and new industry losers.   And, it’s a value that is nearly 4X that of rapidly-growing e-commerce purchase revenues.

When it comes to assessing the value of voice commerce, we need to think the same way.

 Yes, today’s purchase revenue may be small.  But voice is now creating value across shopping decision behaviors throughout the US.

 According to eMarketer’s recent Future of Retail 2019 report, 47 percent of US smart speaker owners have used voice assistants for product search and research.   Given that some 53 million US residents owned smart speakers in 2018, that’s a voice-searching population of roughly 25 million. 

25 million. Can you hear them? Can they hear you?

Some 43 percent of smart speaker owners have used them to make shopping lists.   32 percent, for price comparisons.   27 percent, for checking on deals and promotions.

 They’re shopping.   Shopping with voice.  Making decisions about what and where to buy.  

 This is value creation.  Done with and through voice assistants.

 By the way:  keep in mind that we’re in the early days of voice, and that Google Assistant is now estimated to be resident on more than 1 billion devices worldwide.

 And don’t forget that it wasn’t so long ago that the worth of good ol’ e-commerce was dismissed as being no more than an additional store.

Conversational Commerce: can you hear it coming?

 Let’s talk.

#OpenVoiceNetwork  #voicebot.ai  #Conversational Commerce #MITAutoID Laboratory