If I am not onto something by now then I will eat my digital hat. Google, is announcing the creation of a fricken “Buy Button.” According to my market-o-meter (a personal fictional invention), this looks like a gap forming between retailers and consumers. If this excitement over online shopping is a shock for you, check out South Africa’s Instacart moment and school yourself on what I believe is bubbling beneath today’s consumerist market.
The Wall Street Journal reported this on the search engine’s movements:
No ad to show here.
“The search giant will start showing the buttons when people search for products on mobile devices, according to people familiar with the launch.”
If you didn’t know you could buy things on Google, actually use Google to purchase items, then follow this link to the Google shopping revolution store.
Look out Ebay and Amazon, the Google horse is in the building. Funny, why don’t I hear about such giants as Takealot.com being mentioned? Yes, that is a hint for local South Africans. Look, I think that when I type something into Google, so much cr*p polluted with SEO sh** and random garbage comes up, that the big old glorious Google becomes useless after page two or three. Please tell me this is the dawn of the day where something better than Google is approaching. Hello easy-as-hell and my-way, goodbye effort and all those times I forgot my list at home, because now the retailers realise that we the consumer have a say in this whole consumerist based market.
Aiming at a mobile-based entry, because a lot of online shopping is done through mobile devices and obviously due to the fact that smartphone usage is similar to an addiction.
Take out the consumer interaction with the product and store, a brand becomes a skeleton for what it is worth. Take the consumer out of the store and you are left with an online delivery menu. There are some worries when Google starts to occupy even more space between consumer and online stores, although Google has mentioned it is willing to stay behind scenes during customer-brad interaction, as reported by Engadget
Google promised brands that the product landing pages will be heavily branded with their names and will link to more of their products. The company also won’t take a cut from their sales and will only get paid for every person that clicks their links.
I feel like there will always be products that I want to go and get. Things I need to be there for, like clothes, fresh produce, certain styles or products that offer a sort of experience that require my approval. These products I will go and get myself, always. Toilet paper, tooth paste, All Gold tomato sauce, specific wine, pens or pencils, a dish cloth, brown sugar and the list goes on of things that I don’t need to be there to purchase. If this is some sort of agreement that franchises and search engines need to fight over, then hurry up, I have shopping to do.
If you are unaware of Amazon Dash, then take a look at how it works and how right I am. There are things that you need now which you could pick or find in your sleep and then there are specific items that you need to be awake for. It’s not rocket science trying to figure out that line and bridge the gaps (Transport, storage, co-branding-costing, etc) with technology like we always have. Cheaper three wheel tuk-tuks, already existing storage facilities, team work in supplying consumer needs and those are just the thoughts off the top of my head.
A possible direction is shown with Amazon Dash, a personal-home-shopping tool that lets you do the shopping, at home.
