The digital assistants of Amazon (Alexa), Google (Assistant), Apple (Siri), Microsoft (Cortana), Alibaba (AliGenie) and Tencent (Xiaowei) are expected to be the driving force behind the incredible advance of conversational commerce in the years to come. They will manifest themselves in scores of shapes and purposes. From a personal mobile assistant in smartphones, smart watches, smart speakers (in 2017, American households already had 39 million smart speakers in their home, and 55% of US households are expected to have at least one within the next 5 years) and cars, to a variety of chat bots. But you'll be seeing them in physical shops, as well as in the shape of robots, smart mirrors and speaking shelves.
From Tap & Look to Speak & Listen
Comscore estimates that by 2020, half of all searches will be voice activated. Most of these searches are currently being used for checking weather forecasts or playing your favourite tunes. But this is all about to change, according to research conducted by Capgemini among five thousand consumers in the US, UK, France and Germany, which asserts that voice assistance is on the way to becoming the number-one interaction method with consumers. In short, we're moving from ‘tap & look’ to ‘speak & listen’.
24% of consumers already say they would prefer using a voice assistant to a website, and this percentage is expected to increase to 40% in the next three years. Will it mainly be the online players who feel the pain of conversational commerce. Absolutely not. Looking at the spending mix, it is estimated that the share of physical stores will drop from 59% to 45%. In fact, research indicates that within three years, 31% of consumers will prefer a voice assistant to visiting a physical store.
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