Next gen shopping is more than mobile.
Why did Amazon, the master of pure play retail, buy Whole Foods?
If you talked to anyone in the noughties and listened to the received wisdom, they’d reiterate that the traditional post-war high street–of department stores and brand chains–has fallen forever out of favor, with consumers choosing the convenience of mobile rather than the shoe leather of bricks-and-mortar shopping. Main street shopping was doomed!
Today, however, there is a rising trend for online ‘inspiration’ browsing before people take to the streets to make their purchases in store. Studies by Google found that mobile searches for phrases such as ‘ideas’, ‘gift ideas’, and ‘outfit ideas’ have increased by 55% in 2 years. In that same time period, mobile searches for ‘shopping lists’ have had a 150% increase. And indeed, by 2018 over $1 trillion of sales in the U.S will be made through smartphones, impacting over one third of all total retail sales.
It’s all about the “last mile” relationship: engaging the customer in a haptic, hands-on experience. They cannot get into this experience without the digital so it must be a hybrid retail experience. Where this gets really interesting is that no one knows how it works. Are shoppers going to the stores to research and then buy online or the other way around? We can’t be sure exactly and that’s an exciting place to be in. But, more and more we are recognizing that online works, alone is not going to work. A corner has been turned again as we see these worlds increasingly merging together.
It’s important to understand that both parties need to recognize that online or mobile alone is not going to work. In order to succeed in the market today, there has to be a symbiosis, a hybrid of both online and physical stores. The answer to the riddle of the “last mile” is a confluence of interests.
This is where WOM comes in. It brings an experience that is digitally tailored and personalized. The generation expecting this personalized experience will be born digital natives- GenZ. As with all things digital, the last decade has seen some major shifts in shopping habits. It is indeed a strange ironic landscape now in which both brands and customers are global, currencies are local and the relationships to brands online are mediated.
With YEAY, users go in store to film products they have either just bought or want to buy, to then share these videos on the platform. The app makes these videos shoppable by incorporating affiliate links to the relevant online product pages. This enables other YEAY users to buy the products through the app and, thanks to a points system, ensures that the relevant content creator is fairly rewarded for their video and any subsequent sales it generates. GenZ are leading this type of retail buying and selling, and by 2020, some reports project they’ll command nearly 40% of all consumer shopping.
Understanding their habits is paramount in order to engage and be the most successful in the market. For example in the US 74% of Gen Z members spend five hours or more every day online, with 46% of Gen Z consumers researching items on mobile devices before making purchases in-store.
From this, it can be said that mobile shopping is most prevalent to GenZ and now they are fueling it even more than millennials. However, these trends are continually growing and reaching the rest of the population.
There is a clear transition from the passive consumer to a more active and informed consumer. It is possible now for people to research and provide themselves with a more complete picture about the product or service they are buying. In the past they had a much more limited view. And with the WOM Token, this behavior is encouraged by giving people a way to share information, experiences and recommendations with one another, allowing people to promote products and brands that they really love and receive the compensation they deserve.
With this ability to easily research and share experiences comes the progression of advocacy marketing. Consumers can now have a huge impact on other consumers — lateral influence. Brands must in turn evolve their approach to selling and advertising. No longer does it suffice to throw out advertisements on a product alone and expect people to respond and be persuaded without question. The power of the consumer themselves needs to be taken into account and the power they have in word-of-mouth.
This is the crux of the WOM Token’s existence: giving brands the tools they need to harness this effect and redirect it in a systematic way. In doing so, brands can see who and what has the most positive impact on promoting their brand. For the consumer, the WOM Token provides a way for people to shop the way they want, promote what they want and get fairly rewarded for it.
Learn more about WOM Token HERE.
