Amazon just announced its entry (or re-entry) into the social shopping world with Inspire, an app allegedly inspired by TikTok, to enable a seamless shopping experience.
Social shopping is on the rise. Forecasts suggest global social commerce to hit 2.9 trillion USD by 2026.
With social shopping being one of the top trends for 2023 and beyond, giants such as Meta and now Amazon are trying to crack their way into social shopping to leverage the exceptional benefits the concept promises.
Social media has immense influence over buying decisions. 71% of consumers are more likely to purchase if a recommendation comes through social media. Moreover, 57% of customers report social media as their preferred channel for product discovery.
This is the power Amazon most likely hopes to capitalize on with Inspire, a shopping app built to offer customers a seamless shopping experience and drive platform-native sales.
Understanding Amazon Inspire
Amazon Inspire is a shopping/product inspiration app that looks like social media. Its primary focus is short-form content, something that’s extremely popular with the audience these days. But the platform also allows photo sharing. This makes Inspire a hybrid of TikTok and Instagram.
Using Inspire, customers can discover products, get shopping inspirations, and even add items to their cart, all within the app.
The Inspire app is currently accessible through the Amazon Shopping app via a “lightbulb” icon on the bottom navigation bar.
Clicking on this icon takes you to the app, where you are required to choose your interests, like Work from Home, Interior Design, Skin Care, etc.
You can choose from 20 such interests, and Inspire will personalize your feed accordingly. You will then be able to consume content that aligns with your interests.
Inspire aims to align social with ecommerce by enabling a tag on all the products appearing within the content.
Customers can click on the products they like and access details like reviews, price, etc. and add the products to cart.
Customers often get product inspirations or recommendations from social media. This is why Amazon’s attempt at pairing a social platform with an add-to-cart option will make it easier for consumers to “save” items.
For brands, this could mean a potential increase in sales.
If brands manage to drive product exposure on Inspire, they might be able to get into more people’s carts and eventually generate more sales.
Creating Content on Inspire
Influencers, brands, and customers can all create content for Inspire.
Customers can get their opinion up on the app in the form of reviews.
Amazon influencers, on the other hand, can post the content they have up on their Amazon storefront on Inspire to maximize exposure.
Amazon sellers and vendors registered in the Brand Registry can use the photos in their Brand Posts on Inspire to interact with Inspire audience.
Final Words
Inspire is not Amazon’s first attempt at social shopping, but it certainly is its latest try at expanding into the realm of social media.
Inspire is shopping-focused right now, but it could adopt more social features going forward.
The question is, will customers migrate to Inspire when TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are already reigning the market?
Maybe, given Inspire’s ability to let customers add the products they like to cart directly, without switching apps.
2023 is expected to be big for social shopping, and Amazon is ready for it with Inspire, launched right in the nick of time.
Let’s see how Inspire serves Amazon’s purpose of uplifting the shopping experience and its aim of riding the expected social shopping wave.