By Onome Amuge
The global spend on conversational commerce for over-the-top (OTT) channels, including WhatsApp or WeChat, will witness an 89-percent rise from $13.3 billion in 2022 to $25.1 billion in 2023, driven by retail and eCommerce sectors, a new study by Juniper finds.
The new research also projects that the growth will be driven by verticals such as retail and eCommerce, which provide increased online presence and product availability as retailers refine their online customer experience.
OTT, industry analysts note, is a streaming service delivered over the top of another platform to deliver internet-based content. Thus, OTT-based conversational commerce enables users to make purchases or transfer money directly in OTT messaging apps.
Highlighting the opportunities OTT offers to the eCommerce and retail markets in 2023, Juniper found that the business sub-sectors will account for $9 billion spent globally, over 35 percent of expenditure via OTT conversational commerce channels.
On the flipside, Juniper identified regional fragmentation in the OTT messaging space as a major hindrance to market growth. The research also observed that the varying types of payment methods in use across countries posed a drawback for conversational commerce vendors.
“This flexibility will enable vendors to offer a complete omnichannel experience by providing payments across OTT apps, chatbots, voicebots and RCS business messaging,” the research stated.
To increase market share, Juniper said conversational commerce platforms must also invest in value-added services to provide differentiation from existing conversational services. Giving an example of this, it said digital loyalty programmes can be used to provide personalised and incentivised messages to achieve increases in digital engagement. In addition, it encouraged vendors to facilitate features such as link tracking and call-to-action support to monitor engagement.
Commenting on the impact of OTT on omnichannel, Elisha Sudlow-Poole, the research author, remarked that supporting a sufficient number of communication channels is no longer enough to ensure the success of omnichannel experiences.
“Vendors must look to include additional value-added services into their business model to create depth within existing communication channels,” she advised.
