Commentary

Brands Look To Voice Commerce

Brands appear to be jumping onto the voice bandwagon.

With somewhere around a third of consumers owning a smart speaker like Amazon Echo or Google Home, brands are looking to voice as a way to improve conversion and drive revenue.

Most (91%) business leaders are making significant investments in voice and 94% plan to increase their investment in the coming year, according to a survey of 400 business decision makers by Adobe Analytics.

Most (88%) companies are developing apps for various platforms such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Siri.

The question of if and when voice commerce will take off is still uncertain, though companies seem to be pushing in that direction.

The top priority for 45% of business execs for voice moving forward is enabling customers to make purchases, followed by tracking orders (45%) and making repeat purchases (44%).

Of companies with a voice service in-market, 29% already offer the ability to purchase via voice, and 31% enable refills and renewals, according to the survey. More than a third (34%) let customers receive general information about products, 32% provide search functionality and 28% allow consumers to check the status of rewards.

“Many have doubted the potential of voice-based shopping because they expected it to drive activity in the same way that websites do,” states Heidi Besik, group product marketing manager at Adobe.  “A similar misconception happened when mobile shopping began to take off.  Voice has the ability to support the overall shopping experience and the potential to drive new purchases, and brands are focusing on that.”

The majority (66%) of brands appear to see the potential of voice, with 66% “strongly agreeing” that voice can help increase revenue. Most (71%) also see voice as a way to improve the user experience.

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant can hardly wait.

1 comment about "Brands Look To Voice Commerce".
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  1. PJ Lehrer from NYU, May 17, 2019 at 8:44 a.m.

    No doubt about it.  Voice is the future.  Brands that don't engage will regret it. http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2019/03/voice-is-new-black.html 

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