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<aside> 💡 Live shopping is a conundrum. It’s unbelievably popular in China but lacks traction so distinctly in Western markets that just last month TikTok slackened their determination to make live shopping a success in the UK.
We were wondering why and instead of thinking about it all alone, we teamed up on a Friday afternoon to put pencil to paper (or is it brain to Zoom?) on some of the reasons why we’re not live shopping and, definitely, not live dropping. (Sorry.)
And if you’re looking for some context before jumping in, Sally Zhang created a two-part primer – Beyond QVC: Live Shopping 101 & Live Shopping in China vs. the US: Consumer Perspectives.
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<aside> 🗣️ We kept coming back to a hypothesis that was simple at heart: maybe brands aren’t doing a good enough job of letting us know where to find their shopping streams.
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Elliott Hasiuk: Bigger brands should consider occupying the first ad that pops up when you open a platform like TikTok. I've seen some of those around Prime Day and other major shopping events – those are great for mass awareness. But I also think more targeted ads could drive higher intent users to a specific livestream on Facebook or Instagram.
Dani Hoyler: You have to curate based on your audience. The problem with that is then you have multiple events and you're trying to reach multiple audiences in a way that’s disjointed. If you run a Facebook ad at me, I'm not on that platform a ton and so I'm not going to go there for the purpose of buying because I don't see the value add there.
Evan Petto: Would you go to one that's hosted on a third party website or platform? Say, if you’re on TikTok, and you got that, and it's like, “Hey, go to our website where we're hosting a live shopping event.”
Dani: That feels very QVC to me.
Elliott: For older generations, QVC and HSN would be on in the background whether they're actively shopping or not. But for younger consumers, it can't just be “this is for sale.” It really has to be a managed supply and demand where there's a perceived urgency like one of those brands that has a drop and then sells out right away. That could be a mechanic that happens during a live shopping event.
Evan: QVC, to me, and for a lot of people that I know, is more akin to a used car salesman. It's very much: here's the sales pitch, I'm going to be very cheery, there's only five left, it's at a marked down price, and you've got to buy it now. When I think of that though, that’s not something I really need in my life. It’s way too impersonal.
<aside> 🗣️ We went back-and-forth about whether it was fair to assume that an influencer’s skills match up 1-to-1 in the world of live shopping.
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Elliott: Couldn't it be that an influencer’s effectiveness doesn't translate to products that they're not actually an expert on? I wonder if it has to do with relevancy. In other markets, do the influencers push products that aren’t relevant to them? I figure it needs to be a natural fit.
Sally: When I think about the number of professional live streamers in China, I can count them on one hand. They talk very feast and engage constantly with consumers, and always make sure to drop the promotion link every 10 minutes. For live shopping to be successful, you have to present something unique that you can’t get anywhere after the stream ends, only that can keep people engaged and waiting for what comes next.
One of the main barriers is actually that Western consumers haven’t gotten used to payments on social channels. In China, we’ve been trained to do this. During a recent project, I tried to push the team to make a one-time offer during a stream but they chose instead to focus on talking about their products and celebrating the holiday. Without real-time promotions, I’m not motivated to be in live sessions.
*Live shopping streamers could learn a thing or two from Deborah Vance.*
<aside> 🗣️ Not many of us had been on shopping streams before and that spoke a thousand words of its own.
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