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Dr. Adams’ Lessons in Overcoming Fear
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Prevent Childhood Injury With Physical Therapy
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C-Commerce May Be Online Shopping’s Future
COULD C-COMMERCE CHANGE THE WAY YOU SHOP?
C-commerce may still be in its infancy stages, but Business Insider predicts the booming market could reach $142 billion by 2024.
Remember in the early days of Microsoft Word, when “Clippy” the paperclip would offer helpful advice and tips on how to use the platform? Today, we could consider Clippy one of the first chatbots to change the way customer service functions in the digital age, and now, Clippy’s descendants could be changing the way we shop. Popular brands like IKEA, Sephora, Lego, and Amazon have created “conversational commerce” (c-commerce) bots designed to help shoppers personalize their shopping experience. In the case of Lego, a chatbot named Ralph lives in Lego’s Facebook Messenger. He’s helped confused and overwhelmed United Kingdom customers shop for the perfect Lego kit for Christmas. Ralph was launched in 2017 and other brands are taking notice. The concept is fairly simple. Users reach out to the chatbot via the retailer’s preferred platform, like Messenger or WhatsApp. (Coincidentally, both are owned by Facebook.) The bot provides on-screen prompts, which the consumer answers, allowing the bot’s artificial intelligence software to catalog the best products for this particular consumer, cutting the amount of time spent scrolling through endless options. The bot then presents links to these products in the chat, streamlining a user’s shopping experience.
That projection is up from $2.8 billion in 2019. They also predict it could be a time- and money-saver for health care, retail, and banking industries, potentially saving $11 billion annually.
Still, many questions remain about how a c-commerce bot should work. In a 2016 Medium article, Chris Medina wrote that some of the biggest mysteries about c-commerce involve the apps themselves. Right now, many industries are still toying with the idea. While the bots may not be taking over the world (yet), c-commerce bots like Ralph could revolutionize the way we shop, helping consumers narrow down their options to viable products and personalizing the shopping experience the way Clippy and personal shoppers did in the past.
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