Yandex returned to the idea of voice shopping
[ad_1]
For the first time in three years, Yandex will expand the capabilities of the Alice voice assistant in terms of purchasing goods and services – Lavka users will be able to order groceries and everyday goods through a dialogue with smart devices. The company, like Amazon in the USA, has already tried to develop voice shopping, but in Russia only 1.5% of consumers use such functions: ordering goods by voice involves, in particular, the inability to see the picture and the entire assortment. Experts note that the idea of voice shopping, which originated in the world back in 2017–2018, has generally not justified itself, considering the Yandex project to be purely image-based.
Yandex has added the ability to order groceries and everyday goods from its Lavka service through a dialogue with the Alice voice assistant, the company told Kommersant. The function allows you to list your shopping list, including without naming specific items. If a person pronounces a general name (for example, “milk”), the cart is filled based on the history of previous purchases. To pay for the order, you need to complete the dialogue and then confirm it on your phone when you receive a notification. Voice purchases in Lavka, according to Yandex, will work in Moscow and St. Petersburg from September 28. As a Kommersant correspondent was convinced the day before, the assistant already recognizes the activation phrase “Order goods at Lavka.”
For the first time since January 2020, the company added to Alice the ability to make orders in its other services (at that time Yandex made it possible to order a taxi by voice). Voice orders in Alice appeared in January 2018, before the launch of smart speakers; the function allowed you to buy goods on the Beru marketplace (owned by Yandex together with Sberbank, in 2020 it was bought by Yandex and became part of Yandex Market). Through Alice you can still order goods from Yandex Market, and the activation phrase is still “Help me buy on Beru.”
Yandex did not specify how actively users use Alice for shopping and ordering goods. Ipsos told Kommersant that 11% of participants in a survey conducted in the Russian Federation in the first quarter use voice assistants at home: “But only 1.5% are already using voice shopping, and only 13% are ready to start using it. The data has not changed in the year since the previous measurement.” In the US, voice shopping capabilities are being developed by Amazon, which owns the Alexa assistant and the grocery chains Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. 27.4% of US consumers made purchases through voice assistants in May 2022, according to Statista.
A representative of the Samokat delivery service told Kommersant that the Salyut voice assistant (both services belong to Sberbank) allows you to collect a cart and repeat the previous order. At Vkusville they are developing ordering products by phone call: “About 15–20 thousand orders are placed by phone per month.” Ozon did not respond to Kommersant; VK (Marusya’s assistant) declined to comment.
There are several reasons why voice shopping in Russia has not gained popularity – from the lack of opportunity to see a picture of the product to the lack of directness of the process, says Just AI’s business development director: “When a person wants to order a burger, this should happen, relatively speaking, in two clicks . To complete a transaction using your voice, you have to call the required skill (a program inside the voice assistant.— “Kommersant”), complete the survey, and then complete your order on the website.”
The theory that people will actively order products via voice has not justified itself since its inception in 2017–2018, admits Arseny Kondratyev, senior manager of the Axenix technology consulting practice. The new feature is not aimed at mass distribution, but “at attracting a new audience in an unusual way and strengthening the loyalty of the existing one,” says Saltanat Nysanova, director of customer relations at Nielsen. In her opinion, Yandex could return to the topic of voice ordering of goods based on how consumer behavior is changing. If the shelf of a traditional supermarket contains 100–200 product categories, then in online stores this value is narrowed to 10–20 on the first page of search results: “In the case of voice ordering, the choice is completely narrowed to one or two items.”
[ad_2]
Source link
