Only one in five consumers made online purchases using voice assistants.
Voice commerce has a very bright future. But while it is still in the very early stages of consumer acceptance. It's clear from a study conducted by Sumo Heavy with sister publication Mobile Marketer that only one in five consumers made purchases using a voice assistant like Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri.
Less than half (46%) of US consumers said they never use voice assistants. Only a third of the respondents stated that they regularly use them. At the same time, people who call themselves active users of voice assistants are not in a hurry to use them to make purchases. According to the survey, less than half (42%) of active voice assistant users made purchases using voice commands.
Interestingly, among the active users of voice assistants, there are more iOS users than Android - 68% vs 45%. In total, more than 1,000 US consumers took part in the survey. It is in this market that voice assistants are most actively used, and it is in this country that many efforts are being made to develop voice commerce.
For example, Amazon is doing everything it can to make voice shopping easier for its customers. A key feature of Amazon Alexa is the ability to create shopping lists that the company can process through its e-commerce platform. Amazon does not disclose information about purchases made through Alexa. According to some data, last year the number of such purchases did not exceed 2%. However, the company itself disputes this data, claiming millions of buyers.
Sumo Heavy predicts that the number of voice purchases will increase as consumers become accustomed to new technologies and realize that the capabilities of voice assistants are not limited to just switching music tracks. However, the problem is not only in consumers, but also in sellers. Only 3,8% companies are willing to provide correct information for making voice orders. But the number of voice assistants in use is projected to triple to 8 billion by 2023 from 2.5 billion at the end of 2018.