PPB December 2018

MARKET SHARE ‘Alexa, Add Toilet Paper ToThe Shopping List’ How to prepare your brand for voice-service assistants. It’s one of the easier parts of your day. After a sleepy yawn and morning stretch, you ask your handy assistant, Alexa, to pull up your shopping cart. ’Tis the holiday season, after all, and you’re trying to be proactive. But unbeknownst to you, your virtual cart may contain items that were not selected by you, but by Alexa “herself.” Voice-search assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa and Echo, Google Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri have come to be synonymous with convenience. You’re driving, and you recall your favorite TV series is airing tonight but can’t remember when. Thankfully, it’s Siri to the rescue. Or, it’s a busy week, and you forgot to purchase a gift for your friend’s housewarming party this weekend. Not to fear, Cortana is here, and will help overnight a personalized cutting board to your house. But aside from the convenience factor, these voice-search assistants may be influencing the products that you and your clients are purchasing. Using word-search algorithms, these tools can direct consumers to specific products without guidance from the sellers. This has not posed a significant challenge yet—and that’s a heavy-weighted “yet”—as voice searches make up a small portion of overall sales. But it may very well create issues soon, particularly for the personal, home and packaged-food sectors, as the technology is anticipated to grow in popularity. Before the age of voice-search assistants, retailers invested in shelf space at one- stop shops, like Walmart, BJ’s and Costco. And they certainly still do. To distinguish themselves from competitors, companies invest in marketing techniques, so consumers will recognize their products and, hopefully, turn these companies into household names. Voice-search assistants are obscuring this process, because if consumers request a product (i.e., an acrylic coffee table) only the first and second products that surface might be suggested. This is because voice-search technology was created to provide a single response to users’ questions, rather than use the entire search engine results page (SERP). No mention is being given to products that may be new, lesser known, or placed lower on the SERP. Not only is this limiting to the consumer, but it can be detrimental to suppliers and distributers alike. The results provided by your voice- search assistant may also be influenced by its parent company, which has been the case with Echo and Alexa. The New York Times reported a test of Amazon’s Echo, which drove consumers to purchase Amazon products at least 17 percent of the time. To add to this, Amazon owns more than 120 private labels like Pinzon (bedding), Wickedly Prime (gourmet snacks), Mama Bear (diapers and organic baby food) and Core 10 (activewear). And in 2009, Amazon introduced its AmazonBasics, a line of household commodities ranging from batteries to paper towels and everything in between. The New York Times reported that 70 percent of the time, people conduct internet searches for common items, like a “bowling ball,” “serving platter” or “lampshade.” This makes it easier for companies like Amazon to suggest their own product line for purchase, even manufacturing popular items to offer consumers themselves. And once a consumer purchases a product using Alexa or Echo, this same product is remembered and suggested for reorder in future purchases. According to research company Gartner, the number of Americans that use voice- search assistants is slated to reach 36 million by the end of this year. Amazon is the heavy-hitter in this market, Gartner reported, responsible for 70 percent of sales | DECEMBER 2018 | 71 THINK