Gone are the days that artificial intelligence was a far-fetched fantasy of tech lovers. Today, we can ask our voice-enabled assistants to check the weather, play music, re-stock the fridge and even pay our bills, all thanks to AI. Voice assistants are hotter than ever, but the question for many eCommerce businesses remains: is voice commerce the future of online shopping?
In this article, we explore voice assistants and how they’re impacting consumer behaviour.
In this article you will find
What is voice commerce?
A timeline of modern voice assistants
How popular is voice commerce among consumers?
Voice commerce challenges
The future of voice commerce
What is voice commerce?
Voice commerce is a functionality that enables consumers to make purchases through voice commands on portable devices. Users tell their mobile device what product to look for, and it searches it on the web. Smartphones and tablets powered with virtual assistants, such as Siri and Google Assistant, and smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, are the main devices that facilitate voice tech interaction.
According to Juniper Research, smart speakers, also known as digital voice assistants, are predicted to grow to nearly 8 billion by 2023; that’s an increase of a whopping 433% from 1.5 billion devices active today. Manufacturers – the usual Big Tech companies, like Amazon and Google – embed them with voice apps called “skills” (for Amazon’s Alexa) or “actions” (for Google Home). Users can enable and disable them exactly as they would on their smartphones.
A timeline of modern voice assistants
Voice assistants didn’t always come in the form of small devices that reply to users’ questions about the weather or music playlists for dinner. In 2010, Apple acquired Siri, a start-up with a mission to create a highly clever and personable virtual assistant for smartphones. The tech giant introduced its version of Siri in 2011 to iPhone 4S, expanding its capabilities to multiple languages. In 2012, Google launched Google Now in Android Jelly Bean smartphones, which today is known as Google Assistant.
In terms of smart speaker-based voice assistants, Amazon jumped in the arena in 2014 with Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot. Both smart speakers are activated with the word “Alexa”. Google introduced Google Home in 2016, activated with “Hey Google” and Apple launched Apple HomePod in 2018, which is enabled by the famous “Hey Siri”.
How popular is voice commerce among consumers?
Consumer habits have rapidly changed throughout the years. The following voice commerce statistics are very insightful. A survey conducted by Ipsos Connect in 2018 showed that only 9% of smart speaker owners in the UK use their voice assistants to shop online. In 2019, the tables seem to have completely turned, though. Research conducted on behalf of Artefact UK revealed that 60% of smart speaker owners have used them to make a purchase. The same survey even highlighted that 28% of consumers suggested that they could use them for booking travel.
Reuters Digital News Report showed that smart speaker adoption in 2019 witnessed a 14% increase compared to last year. On top of that, the BBC conducted thorough research in to smart speakers, revealing that 76% of respondents either own or have daily access to smart speakers.
That’s not to say that voice commerce has reached full momentum yet. On the contrary, a recent survey from Attest showed that 44% of UK consumers used their voice-assisted speakers mostly to create a shopping list. 37% of consumers used their smart speaker to research a product before buying it, leaving a mere 20.5% that made a purchase using their voice assistant.
Voice commerce challenges
Conversational commerce, an alternative name for voice commerce, is still at its early stages, not only for online shopping but other industries as well. Although Big Tech companies occasionally sell their smart speakers at low prices, not all consumers are convinced. The biggest barrier to greater user adoption is privacy and security concerns. EY’s Decoding the digital home 2019 report showed that nearly 72% of respondents in the UK are very cautious about disclosing personal and financial information online, even to a trusted brand.
Capgemini Institute’s survey released in September showed that 52% of the respondents were worried their voice assistants were listening to private conversations. However, more than half of the survey’s 12,000 respondents who live in the UK, the US, France and Germany, have a voice-activated device, up from 25% who reported owning a smart speaker in 2017.
Another challenge is the friction that comes with voice assistants. When it comes to specific brands, for instance, Quaker Oats, voice assistants might find it easy to add to the shopping cart. What happens when the user asks for bananas? Will the voice assistant choose ripe or unripe bananas? Big or small? Organic or conventional? The list could go and on, and we haven’t even mentioned the relatively moderate word recognition and wider in-built capabilities that put off, well, most of us.
BBC research showed that 68% of respondents feel frustration when a voice assistant fails to understand them. We’ve talked a lot about how consumers put convenience first, and such obstacles stand in the way of a frictionless customer journey.
The future of voice commerce
The capabilities of voice assistants are sure to improve over time. Consumers can expect better word detection and more seamless interactions. With IoT (internet of things) devices on the rise, voice assistants will be more widespread and available across various touchpoints, from the car to the smart fridge. OC&C consultants reported that voice shopping is currently seen as a sales channel that accommodates typically low-value purchases, such as groceries, electronics and homeware. Once more brands join the smart speaker pack and invest in their skills, combined with the improving and anthropomorphising voice assistants, conversational commerce could evolve in to an experience for customers rather than a tedious habit.
Takeaway
Retail is a sector that can greatly benefit from the trend that comes with voice assistants. Nearly half of smart speaker owners feel that they aren’t getting the most out of their device, as stated by the Artefact UK research.
Amazon, as an eCommerce business, has experimented with Alexa, offering its Prime subscribers’ access to some of its best offers through their smart speaker. Retailers such as Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and JD Sports have built Alexa skills to enable smart speaker owners to shop their groceries or athletic gear through their device.
This is an opportunity for innovative retailers and eCommerce businesses to get ahead of the game through branded skills that cater to consumers’ needs and offer an experience they never knew they wanted.
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