Live shopping has been trending for a while now though it originated decades ago with live TV shopping. The pandemic has given it a further boost along with the shoppers finding it more convenient and business owners exploring the unlimited possibilities- higher reach to audience, better conversion, increased ROI, higher revenue, better brand identity and the list goes on. According to a recent report, the live shopping market is predicted to be worth US $23 billion by 2023 in the U.S. itself. With more and more businesses from the diverse sectors adopting live shopping, it is bound to give a tough competition and most importantly, it is such a trend that is going to last long even in the post-pandemic years. In order to utilize it in your business benefits, you must need to know about it in-depth. In this blog we will know what is live shopping, why live shopping is trending in 2022 and more. Let’s start!
What is Live Shopping?
In the simplest words- live shopping is an advanced version of online shopping where the products are shown on live stream over various platforms such as social media, live streaming platform etc. to the audience along with the related information like additional offers, discounts, price, benefits etc. and they can make a direct purchase from the CTAs or website link during the live streaming. Owing to its additional benefits such as reaching a wider audience over diverse platforms, engaging with the audience in real-time, conveying brand values/updates and others, live shopping has garnered wide popularity across the globe. Starting from Walmart to Tommy Hilfiger- even leading brands are adopting live shopping to unleash its potential. Here we are going to delve deeper to know what makes live shopping so popular in 2022.
Why is Live Shopping Trending in 2022?
The live shopping concept is as old as back in the early 90s where the home shopping shows used to be broadcasted on HSN or QVC network. It gradually evolved and became a more advanced version with the introduction of live streaming platforms, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others and with the increase in people’s inclination towards shopping from the comfort of their home. However, the perks and facilities one can get from live stream shopping is not limited to these. There are several reasons behind live shopping taking the centrestage, especially in the e-commerce sector, and here’s why-
1. Helps Reach a Large Audience Base
Live shopping is much more effective than physical shopping and even than online shopping at times as it lets you reach a large pool of audience/potential customers across the world. It lets you fully leverage multiple social media platforms and their respective audience of diverse demographics. Furthermore, as people are getting more comfortable with the ‘new normal’, where every other thing is getting virtual, shopping is not an exception. Rather, live shopping is more like a new version of online shopping and not just an option to be used only during the pandemic. As businesses have already seen how fast and easily they can reach the larger audience base compared to just the website visitors, they are taking it as a practice to adopt in the long run.
70% of the U.K. customers claim to have interest in live shopping over traditional/online shopping.
Also Read: Why is Live Streaming a Must-have for Marketing?
2. Creates Impactful Brand Awareness
Creating an impactful brand awareness among the customers is one of the ultimate goals of e-commerce and other businesses. A long lasting brand awareness widens the path to have more loyal customers with higher life cycle values, higher recurring revenue, and overall profit and by adopting live shopping on a regular basis, you can create a positive and consistent brand impact and awareness among the audience. Statistics say that consistency from brand in terms of engagement with customers, its presence over various platforms, and others leads to higher brand awareness that eventually increases the revenue up to 23%. And not only this, according to research, it takes at least 5 to 7 impressions for people to remember a brand and live shopping serves all these purposes single-handedly without costing you anything extra!
The global sales from the e-commerce industry grew by 25% as in 2020 where live shopping played a significant role.
3. Boosts Impulse Buying
One of the most unique advantages of live shopping is, it increases the chances of impulse buying. According to recent statistics, more than 80% of the young buyers do impulse buying while shopping online and the rate is often higher for live shopping, where the viewers instantly make purchases based on the products shown, or discounts offered.
Live shopping sales are likely to account for 20% of all e-commerce sales by 2026, where a successful live shopping drives 20% of the audience to buy something.
4. Better ROI
Live shopping is what you can conduct without paying any additional cost. There is vast space to be utilized along with your live streaming platform and you get to leverage the power of social media as well as can reach out to potential prospects without investing heavily. There are innumerable opportunities live shopping can bring such as-
- Helps in upselling and cross selling products
- Increases the visibility and reach of the products which often remain unexplored by the customers
- By organizing live shopping events regularly, you can draw more customers to your brand and boost the customer acquisition rate
- Live shopping lets your brand stay in touch with your customers, keep them updated about your products and offerings, and keep them engaged with your brand resulting in better customer retention rate
These all together not only help improve your ROI (Return on Investment) but increase overall business profitability.
5. A Marketing Strategy that Requires Zero Investment
Live shopping is no less than a marketing tool that can work in multiple ways-
- Lets you display and promote your products live on multiple platforms/websites/apps
- Drives word-of-mouth promotion about your brand as well as products
- Enables you to promote the ongoing sales, offers, discounts, coupons etc.
- Helps in scaling up/globalizing your business by increasing sales, drawing potential customers across the continents and reaching a global pool of consumer irrespective of your business location
Intriguing Facts & Statistics
- Live shoppers are 40% less likely to return a product compared to the other shoppers
- Nearly 80% of the consumers consider live shopping to be more convenient
- The live shopping sector grew by more than 70% during the pandemic and is set to grow further
- The spring 2021 live stream of the leading footwear brand Aldo registered 308% engagement rate and 17,000 pageviews on its website just within 5 days
- Live shopping generated nearly US $5.6 billion sales in the U.S. in 2020 and is subject to increase further
- Coffee and tea manufacturer Quivr claimed to witness 150% increase in sales in 24 hours of its live streaming
- CAIA cosmetics’ first live stream has driven 5% conversion rate which is higher than the conversion from its website
- Conducting regular live shopping can boost the conversion up to 39%
To Conclude,
Live shopping, undoubtedly, has become a powerful means to not only sell the brand products but to achieve a lot of other targets a business can have. With digitization changing the targets, operations, trends and other factors of different businesses, not only the e-commerce sector but even companies operating in SaaS, electronics and other sectors are opting for live shopping events. Such events being highly effective in leveraging the diverse platforms and giving multiple other advantages as discussed above, surely hold the potential to prevail long in the future.
If you haven’t tried live streaming commerce for your brand/store yet, it’s high time to take the plunge. All you need to do is find a good live streaming platform that meets the business criteria. Muvi Live, an enterprise-grade live streaming platform, can be your choice if you want to deliver your customers a brand-defining live shopping experience. Equipped with built-in CDN, easy social media integration, offline viewing, audience engagement tools, analytics, and robust security, to name a few, Muvi Live offers much more than you are looking for. Take a 14-day free trial today to stream your next live shopping and see the difference it brings (no credit card needed)!
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