"Alexa-how do you kill a brand? "
Since 2015, Amazon has introduced "Amazon Echo" devices on the market of speaker-shaped cylinders equipped with artificial intelligence dubbed "Alexa," named after the library in Alexandria.
The personal assistant allows the user to recall music, do web searches, and get answers to his or her questions through powerful voice recognition software.
Just say, "Alexa, add to cart..." to purchase and receive the desired product very quickly.
Alexa gets smarter every time you use it, a nice benefit for the customer and even more so for Amazon: customers trust the company so much that they allow it to listen to their conversations and collect data on their consumption. In this way, the company can learn more about consumers' private lives and desires than any other.
All indications are that by leveraging this knowledge Amazon aims to implement "zero-click ordering" in all its operations. Before long, Amazon will respond to every material need without the hassle of having to decide or order. We can call this method "Prime squared."
Alexa also offers lower prices on many products when ordered by voice rather than by click. In important categories, such as batteries, the voice assistant suggests Amazonbasics, the company's private label that currently accounts for one-third of all batteries sold despite the fact that the company sells batteries from numerous brands.
Brands have always referred back to a series of mental associations by which customers navigate their way through the offerings in the marketplace. Consumer products such as Coca-Cola have spent billions and decades building their brands through messaging, packaging, in-store positioning, pricing and merchandising. But when buying habits migrate online, these elements are far less important. There is no visual merchandising, no carefully placed displays in supermarkets.
Voice technology, further makes those brand attributes that have cost so much money and effort lose importance.
In fact, by ordering through voice, consumers do not know the price or see the packaging and are less likely to include the brand name in their request.
Death, for brands, has a name: Alexa.
Consumers will go to stores less and less in search of products because it will be easier to order them from the comfort of home from Amazon, which in turn is building its monopoly in online shopping.
The solution? invest in people!
Retailers like Sephora are not doomed. People in the age of abundance do not go to stores to buy, but to have experiences, to talk to experts who can grasp their specific needs.
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Eleonora Bracaglia
Brand Ambassador Digital Innovation Days20
