Connie Chan from the VC Firm Andreesen Horowitz recently tweeted out something that caught my eye, a post about the future of retail shopping. She also blogged about it and after you read what she had to say you’ll know why I was so intrigued:
“We all shop for different reasons. We shop out of necessity and utility, of course. But for some of us, shopping also evokes joy, comfort, validation, even stress relief. And increasingly, I believe we’ll shop as a form of entertainment.
While this motivation may be latent—even subconscious, for most—in the U.S., it’s an economic driver that’s well understood in China, fueling a thriving video ecommerce market. In Asia, the powerful force of video entertainment shopping has spawned a livestream ecommerce industry akin to professional movie production. It’s more than a place where anyone can be a seller from their bedroom—in fact, quite the opposite. In China, selling via video commerce has quickly evolved into professional grade programming. There, selling sessions are scripted and hosted by sellers who are no less qualified than actors on a television show. There’s high-end lighting, rented wardrobes and sets, sound editors, production managers, and professional make-up artists. There’s even confetti! It’s why live shopping is already an $137 billion a year industry in China—truly, an industry. By comparison, digital ad spend in the U.S. totaled approximately $135 billion this year, according to eMarketer.
This is not a trend—it’s a game-changing movement. I call this shopatainment. Shopatainment is when sellers leverage video over photos to sell products, and where buyers browse seller videos as if they’re switching TV stations, looking for entertainment.
While early examples of shopatainment in the West have been created in people’s homes or in low-cost set-ups, shows are destined to become high-fidelity productions. And though there are U.S. startups vying for this space—not to mention the many existing ecommerce brands that are rightfully eyeing live shopping as an add-on feature—this is not a winner-take-all phenomenon. Ultimately, I believe that every successful future online retailer will one day rely on video over traditional photo-based listings.
Shopatainment is part art, part game show, part theater, part supply chain management, and part auction house. Most of all, it’s retail’s killer app.”
I’m all in on this idea as it seems almost inevitable that it will happen especially since COVID-19 is driving people away from brick and mortar stores, even more than the Internet already was. And in some ways the movement is already here within Instagram and TikTok as celebrities and influencers are already building content around endorsing items, collaborating with brands, and in some cases even launching their own product lines. The only real difference going forward will be how many other people get in on the fun, the scale that it grows to, and the professional look that it takes on.
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