Deciphering interactions and influencing them along this new age AIDA model will be an interesting learning curve for brands and marketers

Buyology is evolving faster than biology; that is, how we buy is changing than how fast living beings evolve. In the last two decades, every industry either saw exponential growth or a drastic disruption, not because they couldn’t keep up, but primarily due to shift in people’s behaviour strongly influenced by technology.  Kodak could have made better photo prints, but people wanted more ‘likes’ on Instagram for their filter brushed pictures.

The last two years has been maddeningly fast and wickedly innovative (like the Instagram filters); all this rapid change in people’s attitude and behaviour towards consumption can be attributed to how we use technology. Inito, a startup lets you test fertility at home with a smartphone; we don’t play music, we stream them, stories are to be told in bingeworthy formats and on demand, even animals are impacted for good when the web lets you find mates for pets online.

Every new form of technology changes our buying behaviour, the term iGen stood for internet generation ten years ago, and quickly moved to being termed as impatient generation, and to satiate our sense of urgency, brands must keep up with the pace. Amazon just revealed that they have over 100 million Prime customers and cited India as the fastest growing market for Prime.

The Google Home – Walmart matrimony will be a happy ending for customers. While the e-commerce industry is yet to reach maturity point in the PLC curve, the buzzword omnichannel has been merely confined within the slides of PowerPoint presentations under ‘innovations folder’ for many businesses. And then boom, we already have Voice commerce picking up speed.

How will voice impact buying behaviour?
Voice commerce is a collective term we use to include smart home hardware devices such as Amazon Echo, Google Home, other sensors and home appliances. Smart assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri that we interface with. The software or app equivalent on these devices called as Actions on Google, Alexa Skills.  Voice commerce is an ecosystem that includes all the content, and plug and play third-party products, brands and service providers in between.

Voice can liberate us from the monotony of repeat purchases: We are creatures of habit and seldom change our preferences when buying household goods like toiletries, cosmetics, or sanitary products. Buying these is not classified as shopping, but as chores. Purchasing these goods with voice will be a liberating experience for the money rich, time-starved audiences. Just say the words to the conveniently placed voice assistant on the kitchen counter and get them delivered at the doorstep.

For FMCG brands, this is great news; they can start embracing voice commerce by merely being present on all leading voice platforms.

Everyone’s voice is heard: The consumer behaviour model has many personas, the influencer, user, and buyer, gatekeeper and so on...Now imagine every one of them interacting with a brand at the same time! Voice commerce redefines the concept of family shopping, which by the way will never be the same again. With smart assistants dwelling amidst us in living rooms, everyone from adolescent children to grandparents have nearly unrestricted interactions with it to discover, consider or purchase things.

Deciphering these interactions and influencing them along this new age AIDA model will be an interesting learning curve for brands and marketers.

Re-imagining the retail customer experience with human emotions: ROPO or the phenomenon of researching online and purchasing offline has been around since the advent of smartphone, most retail outlets now price match online rates if a customer points it out. But, the overall shopping experience in large retail outlets has been consistent (in a boring way) and is ripe for innovation.

Currently, the role of salespersons at stores are relegated to that of a talking human brochure, if voice assistant can answer product question in an intuitive and natural conversation, then the true role of a salesperson would be to build better rapport and ensure customers have a personalised shopping experience, not through data, but through human emotions.

Sreeraman Thiagarajan, co-founder of Agrahyah Technologies, says: “Every new technology takes a significantly lower amount of time than its predecessor to garner a critical mass of users, and the adoption of voice by people has been the fastest so far. Brace yourselves, as we enter a voice first world.”