Shopping by Voice a Hard Sell for Consumers
AI-based
voice communication has finally caught on, seven years after Apple’s Siri
launch marked the first major step toward making it part of our daily lives.
The recent introduction of Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition was the signal for me
that voice technology is here to stay. Children are growing up talking to
humanized devices as if it’s the most normal thing. My nieces matter-of-factly
interact with Amazon’s Alexa all the time, getting “her” to play songs for
their kitchen dance shows, checking math homework solutions, and asking Alexa
fun questions. (“Are you a girl? Are you bold?”) When the 7-year-old learned
that Alexa can shop, she jokingly said, “Alexa, buy me a TV.”
The idea of actually using Alexa to buy
something is an unusual concept to her, which seems to be the case with much of
the adult population, too. As of now, voice assistants are mainly used to
access news, weather updates, and other information, and to play music and
podcasts. But voice shopping hasn’t taken off. It is like a magic carpet with
the potential to transport us instantly and conveniently to any shopping destination
we can imagine, but part of the carpet is still stuck to the ground. The
infrastructure of devices that support voice-assisted shopping has greatly
expanded, but software components are underdeveloped.
Voice Shopping Is Full of Potential
Shopping-related
voice interactions do have some traction, though. A survey by Adobe Analytics found that 22 percent of home
speaker owners polled use their devices for shopping, and another
study by PwC found that 10 percent of the
U.S. voice-assistant users it sampled place daily orders by voice.
Voice technology can greatly benefit both
businesses and consumers. It can enhance businesses’ multichannel strategies
not just by enabling purchases but also by supporting other parts of the
shopping process, including item searches, creation of shopping lists, customer
service inquiries, delivery status updates, payments, and customer reviews.
Voice assistants align well with current
consumer needs, too. They enable user-friendly, hands-free communication, speedy
transactions not slowed down by human interaction or multiple clicks, and a
more convenient way to truly personalize services and automate routine shopping
tasks. Plus, customers can multitask while driving, cooking, exercising, or
watching TV.
Large-Scale
Adoption Requires Ecosystem Development
To
understand what will make voice commerce take off, it’s helpful to
consider research by Wharton professor Rahul Kapoor and Dartmouth
professor Ron Adner about how new technologies are adopted. It suggests looking
at the entire ecosystem of interdependent components that jointly create a new
technology’s benefits.
In AI-based voice commerce, the key elements
are:
•
Infrastructure of devices and platforms, such
as smartphones, tablets, speakers, cars, TVs, watches, household devices,
robots, and websites.
•
Voice technology that is frictionless and humanized and
comes with clear and robust privacy policies and security measures.
•
Voice apps and content that support shoppers
with any task in the shopping process.
•
Personal data from user interactions to improve
personalization and thus usefulness.
According to the research, the system is only
as strong as its weakest part. So if the development of these components moves
forward at a different pace and scope, adoption can be slow (think mobile
payments) or might never happen (perhaps delivery drones). Conversely, if one
or more elements makes a major step forward, this can motivate other components
to develop, boosting tech adoption. With voice shopping, the voice
infrastructure has advanced faster than the other components.
How to Advance Voice Shopping
Five ecosystem developments will help the
magic carpet of voice-assisted shopping take off.
•
Partner with the Google Assistant.
Amazon
is the leader in voice commerce, which perfectly aligns with Amazon’s core
business skills of tech and retailing. For other retailers to compete on voice
and therefore make voice-assisted shopping more ubiquitous, they should partner
with Google to make their assortments shoppable via the Google Assistant.
Walmart, Target, Ulta Beauty, and some other retailers already have done this.
•
Mitigate shopping chores.
To
entice consumers to voice shop and make it habitual, voice features should
facilitate tedious shopping tasks, such as repeat ordering of grocery and
household staples, car rides, and takeout meals, among other things. Voice apps
can also support pre- and post-purchase interactions such as product searches,
delivery status updates, balance alerts, customer service, and the recording of
product reviews.
•
Combine voice and screen.
Since
many product categories, including apparel, accessories, and color cosmetics,
don’t lend themselves to shopping exclusively by voice, combining voice with a
screen opens new doors. Next-generation
mobile phones, which will more seamlessly connect speech-
and touch-based applications, could hold great potential for voice shopping,
especially since smartphones are by far the leading way that people access
voice assistants. Combined voice and screen home speakers — such as Amazon’s
Echo Show — can also support voice shopping. This could be an opportunity for
Google.
• Ease
shoppers’ concerns about security.
According
to the PwC
2018 Global Consumer Insights Survey, 13
percent of consumers sampled across 27 territories don’t use AI devices because
they are concerned about security. A recent
incident in which an Amazon Echo accidentally
recorded and shared a private conversation certainly didn’t help ease these
worries. Building trust has to be a top priority, by implementing the right
data policies, ramping up voice systems’ security, and considering blockchain
applications. Voice-assistant providers could also offer more generic voice
assistants that don’t require the user to connect a phone to access personal
information. This would reduce individualized shopping, but it could help
persuade new users to try voice commerce, and win their trust — and voluntary
data sharing — over time.
•
Further humanize voice assistants.
The
more personified and natural voice assistants feel, the more they can positively
impact voice shopping. In fact, according to research
on anthropomorphism (the attribution of human traits to
inanimate objects), people trust autonomous cars that are personified with a
name, gender, and voice more than those that are not. Making voice assistants
emotionally intelligent through advanced technology — for example, by making
them mimic
the user's voice or adapt to a situational context —
could create even more of a psychological bond with consumers and thus
encourage voice shopping.
Adopting voice commerce is an even bigger
step for businesses and consumers than the transition from online to mobile
shopping, because despite many big differences in those two platforms, they at
least share the same modes of communication: text, images, and videos. As
people search by voice, brands will need to make sure they're literally top of
mind -- more challenging than coming out near the top of search results on a
mobile screen. So, helping consumers remember their brand preferences will take
on new importance. As was the case when mobile commerce emerged, voice
communication raises important questions about how voice systems will
prioritize search results and how advertising will work. Answers to these
questions will influence consumer trust and ultimately affect when and how this
magic carpet takes flight.
Denise Dahlhoff
https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Shopping-by-Voice-a-Hard-Sell-for-Consumers?gko=6b331&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20180703&utm_campaign=resp
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