WSJ News Exclusive | Amazon Launches TikTok-Style Feed in Push to Accelerate Social Shopping
Amazon.
AMZN 1.35%
com Inc. is rolling out a TikTok-like feature in its app that will allow customers to buy products from a customized feed of photos and videos.
Amazon launched the feature Thursday for select customers and plans to make it available across the U.S. in the coming months, the company told The Wall Street Journal. The portal, which the company named Inspire, will show users a continuous feed of photos and videos featuring products that customers can purchase through the app. The Journal in August reported that Amazon was testing Inspire with a small number of employees.
With the launch of Inspire, Amazon is delving further into social shopping and joining
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parent Meta Platforms Inc.,
Alphabet Inc.’s
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Google and others to capitalize on the popularity of the short-video format that has powered the rise of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance Ltd. Tech companies have tried to bridge online shopping and social experiences but have had limited success. Amazon has been recruiting influencers as it has built up its social-shopping business.
Amazon has a user base of hundreds of millions of customers. Short-form video “is an incredibly useful medium of helping people discover and understand products,”
Oliver Messenger,
Amazon’s director of shopping, said in an interview. “Video-based content really helps [customers] to understand the product more.”
Mr. Messenger said that while Inspire is shopping-focused, it has social traits and could expand into features such as options to share content and trending content.
The Inspire portal will appear as a lightbulb-shaped icon at the bottom of Amazon’s app. When customers click on the widget, it will bring them to a feed that displays a stream of images and videos featuring products that shoppers can “like” and purchase. Shoppers can view item descriptions and add products to their shopping cart.
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Customers will be asked to select interests such as gaming or pets when they first use Inspire, Amazon said, and the portal will curate content to shoppers’ interests, growing more attuned over time. Amazon said shoppers will be able to buy products displayed by other customers, influencers and brands.
Tech companies have struggled to meld social experiences with online shopping. Meta’s e-commerce services, which the company developed in 2020, have fallen short of expectations, the Journal reported in May. Some retailers said then that the service missed basic components such as the ability to display products in different colors and sizes if they aren’t sold directly through Facebook and Instagram, limit where a merchant can ship items and provide next-day or same-day deliveries.
Meta has been among the companies that moved quickly to launch products similar to TikTok’s addictive, endless stream of short-video content, which has made the Chinese firm one of the most successful and powerful social-media platforms. In February, Meta launched its Reels short-video product globally, after introducing it in 2020. Google last year expanded YouTube Shorts, which shows videos of up to 60 seconds, to the U.S.
Mr. Messenger, the Amazon executive, said the company will process customer feedback about Inspire and use that to shape how it evolves.
Amazon is in its most important sales period of the year. The company has warned that its fourth-quarter sales could fall below expectations, and it has recently moved to cut thousands of corporate employees after saying it over-expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The company has also seen a fall in customer satisfaction, the Journal reported recently, with survey data and customer feedback showing displeasure with the company’s search results, products, search advertisements, customer service and some shipping issues. Amazon has said it continually works to improve features on its website and app and that customers remain highly satisfied with their experience.
Inspire adds to the company’s earlier efforts to attract social creators and influencers. Amazon in recent years has tried to court elite social-media users to its influencer program, which allows creators to build personalized pages on Amazon and earn money when followers make purchases through customized links. It said Inspire is another way influencers can grow their businesses.
Write to Sebastian Herrera at [email protected]
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