“Talk” About A Busy Holiday Shopping Season!
V-Commerce Just Getting Started. Are You Ready?
We are already anticipating the largest digital commerce holiday shopping season of all time this year. Digital Commerce is set to account for $123.73 million out of the roughly $1 trillion dollars that will spend this holiday season at retail, according to eMarketer.
Joe Scartz
Chief Digital Commerce Officer
Joe is an accomplished marketing executive, and as our fearless leader, is responsible for overseeing all digital commerce strategy and execution.
With more than 20 years of success for brands such as Harley-Davidson, United, Budweiser, Clorox, and Hershey, Joe has an impressive history of helping agencies and Fortune 500 companies meet their strategic and financial goals.
Voice, while a fractional amount of that total currently, is accounted for in the digital commerce number. The question is…how big can voice commerce (v-commerce) grow in the years to come and what should brands and manufacturers do about it?
The Landscape Today
Today, voice commerce is benefitting from broad adoption of software and hardware platforms and tools that enable voice shopping. At VELOCITY., we divide this software and hardware into four primary categories: The voice assistant powering the experience (distributed through various devices), the pervasive smart phone, smart speakers, and IOT as a category.
The Voice Assistant
The four major AI players are Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri and Cortana. Nearly half of U.S. adults use voice assistants on their smartphones, but also through IOT, laptops, tablets, cars and various other devices. Siri is the most widely used due to the iPhone followed by Alexa, Google Assistant and then Cortana. However, Amazon and Google clearly lead in proliferation and usage of smart speakers (Echo and Google Home specifically). More on that in a moment..
The Smartphone
We all know that the smartphone has reached critical mass (particularly in developed countries). What is important for v-commerce is that AI and voice assistants are being embedded into the user experience on these phones more seamlessly. Siri integration was a major component of ios 12. Earlier in 2018, Google announced that 95% of Android phones will be reached by Google Assistant. Clearly the two biggest players in the smartphone world want their assistant to be the center of your relationship with their hardware and software.
The Smart Speaker
It is anticipated that the Google Home and Amazon Echo (all variations) will be two of the hottest selling items this holiday season and throughout 2019. As of June, 2018 20% of U.S. households own a smart speaker and Deloitte expects 63% growth next year globally.
The Prospects for Growth
As we have seen, the technology and the platforms for continued growth in voice are established. So, what are the commerce opportunities for voice?
Some firms have predicted that voice will grow to $40 billion dollars in the U.S. and U.K. by 2022. This is significant, when you consider that those two countries are leading nations in adoption of voice globally. Therefore, brands need to be prepared. In a world where one or a firm search results on Amazon or Google, or even Siri could limit your brand exposure, optimizing for voice today; not tomorrow, is your best bet. Measure your voice readiness on a brand-by-brand and product-by-product basis now. The future of search and brand engagement via voice has arrived.
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