Voice shopping is rapidly becoming one of the most common ways for Americans to find product details and make purchases, according to the most recent U.S. Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report 2019 from Voicebot. Approximately four percent of all US adults making purchases via voice and the study showed that a year-over-year increase in purchases of around 1.4-percent.
That figure is in terms of monthly active “voice commerce” users and seems to apply to those who use the feature on smart speakers only. As many as 15-percent of all smart speaker owners fall into that category, with as many as 3.9-percent of users claiming to shop with their voice on a daily basis.
Among those who access the same devices for searching out product information, rather than explicitly to buy things, the numbers are even higher, topping ten percent for daily searchers. 27.8-percent of users conduct similar searches using voice on a monthly basis and nearly half have done so at least once.
The trend will likely grow before leveling off thanks to Millennials
Millennials represent at least one area where growth seems to be centralized and another factor may be an increased focus on shopping from some of the biggest names in the business too. Typically defined as the group of people born from 1981 through 1996 — ages 22-37 — as many as 45-percent of users in that demographic are using voice features for shopping tasks on a more regular basis.
Perhaps surprisingly, Google’s efforts to coax users across the board for the purpose of shopping seems to be working. Google Assistant was by far the most popular among users, taking 24-percent in the related poll. By contrast, Amazon’s Alexa landed in at third with just 18-percent choosing it over others. Siri snagged another 19-percent of users while Microsoft’s Cortana ranked in last with 5-percent.
That’s all stacked on top of a 40-percent year-over-year increase in ownership overall, Voicebot says.
Displays seem to make a big difference and Google may be set to win
Alongside those trends is yet another that may be helped along by incoming changes being implemented by Google and specifically related to the current uptick as it relates to screen-enabled voice assistants.
Voicebot CEO Jeff McMahon has commented on the trend to indicate that the six-fold increase in AI-enabled smart home displays may be contributing immensely to the trend. Visual shopping results are one area where Google has recently been spotted bringing shopping to the forefront, particularly in areas of search more commonly related to image results.
The search giant’s most recent alterations enable sellers to showcase multiple products with hideable descriptions and pricing placed in image overlays in those results as well as making improvements incoming for shopping results within other web-based tools for searching. With those in place, users will be able to perform a voice search using their display-enabled assistant across any search category and still see shopping results returned.
That will almost certainly increase the number of users shopping with voice assistants and provide Google another key edge over its top competitors.
