Social Commerce: A growth opportunity for Shopping

Social commerce is a part of the broader e-commerce ecosystem resulting from the combination of a 16.4% growth in social media usage year-over-year and the need for companies to reach customers wherever they are. In short, social media platforms today help businesses turning customers’ dependence on images and video into shopping activity, providing them with an immediate purchase experience.

Instagram and Facebook are leading the social commerce trend worldwide. Recently, Shopify partnered with the two platforms to connect more than 1million merchants with a potential daily customer base of 500 million and 1.9 billion users, respectively. As reported by eMarketer, in the US, 58% of Millennials said social media are an important source of information when making shopping decisions. Shopify’s customers can discover products while navigating on their favorite social network and interact directly with brands via messaging and Livestream shopping. After that,, they can complete orders by paying on the social platform through Shop Pay.

Pinterest also offers a visual interface that is ideal for social commerce, but unlike other platforms, 97% of the top searches on Pinterest are for unbranded goods. This unique marketplace is a great advantage for small and medium-sized businesses because their content can gain visibility based on the quality of their product and not by brand awareness. In addition, Pinterest’s most distinguishing feature is the use of Augmented Reality on its platform: When users see something in the real world, they can take a picture using the Pinterest camera and run a visual search for similar products. Or again, through an AR feature called "Try On", users can try on different makeup, save for later shopping, or buy through the retailer’s site.

According to Statista, Social Commerce is currently worth $89.4B, but it is expected to skyrocket to $600B in the next seven-year, as more people grow accustomed to buying online. With evolving technologies and the increasing use of smartphones, social networks are a key distribution channel for companies to both find new customers and boosting sales.

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The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.

Live Streaming is Replacing Traditional Media

Even if live streaming has been around for many years, it experienced a tremendous acceleration during the pandemic as people spent on average 30% more time engaging with their smartphones and media devices.

As technology and media consumption remains higher than pre-covid levels, the success of Live Streaming is growing on a global scale. One of the sectors in which it has been more successful is e-commerce: E-commerce consumption accelerated by three years during the pandemic, and the increased competition in the virtual space worked as a catalyst, pushing companies to improve their users’ online experience and catch their attention.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba was the pioneer of Live Streaming in e-commerce. Through the Live Streaming platform Taobao, Alibaba created a new personalized shopping experience, connecting companies with roughly 800 million monthly users who visit Alibaba’s e-commerce site. Taobao’s range of products available in live streaming has been growing massively and the platform is expanding its offer to those categories previously available only offline, such as cars and large appliances.

Live streaming has also become a key feature in the social media landscape. With 2.6 billion downloads, 1.6 billion worldwide users (including Duoyin), and 800 million monthly active users, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms ever. What makes TikTok unique is its AI algorithm. Once a video is uploaded on the platform, the AI algorithm uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze and categorize the video – including audio, hashtag, and images, which allows TikTok to provide users with highly targeted content that they find most interesting. In this way, TikTok’ content can engage its new users for up to 10 minutes, which is three times the capability of Instagram.

Another example is the Amazon-owned platform Twitch, which hosts 91% of all video game streaming and provides the content of more than 4 million broadcasters, monthly. In a high-competitive video games landscape, Twitch differs for the “Just Chatting” category: Streamers can engage with the community and talk to viewers even when they are not playing any game. To understand the impressive growth of the platform, consider that Twitch peaked at around 1.7 billion hours watched in November 2020, versus Facebook’s all-time-high of 250 million in September.

The live streaming market can become the largest entertainment medium. As reported by TechJury, the global live streaming market is surpassing the traditional media ecosystem - such as TV or social media- and it is expected to be worth over $247B by 2027. The growth trajectory is supported by a secular shift in consumer habits, considering that 63% of people aged 18-34 watch live streaming content regularly.

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The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.

From Work Automation to RPA: A Revolution in the Digital Workers’ Era

In recent years the level of interest in the Robot-as-a-Service ecosystem has increased together with the acceleration of digitalization worldwide. Compared with Traditional Automation, where a machine’s software is programmed and updated by humans to execute specific repetitive tasks, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is run by an Artificial Intelligence-powered software that allows a machine to autonomously learn and mimic user’s actions and subsequently execute a high volume of repetitive tasks and transactions, with limited human interaction.

RPA is bringing organizations into a new automation era. Digital robots can do a wide range of tasks in a faster and more efficient way than humans. At the same time, with a higher degree of accuracy, they help organizations to reduce workflow costs while improving productivity.

UiPath is among the fastest-growing RPA software Companies in the world. The company developed a high-scale automation software solution for enterprises which operate in different sectors – such as healthcare, finance, or manufacturing, to help them automate repetitive and boring office tasks: By combining different capabilities of AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning, the UiPath RPA system can save organizations million-hours of work office and allow employees to be focused on more important things to do.

Another example is Nintex, a global management and automation system developer which provides companies with an RPA bot to control and orchestrate workflows through a simple web interface. Nintex RPA software uses “digital workers” to perform actions similar to human workers, but non-stop, at a higher speed, and without errors, by replicating the same mouse clicks performed by humans. In summary, tasks delegated to the RPA bot interact with apps, systems, websites, and services, allowing people to focus on more relevant aspects of their job.

RPA represents a fast-growing segment as businesses need automated technology to interact more efficiently with their customers and process complex, data-hungry tasks in a faster and more efficient way. According to Gartner, the RPA industry is expected to grow at double-digit rates through 2024. The addressable market is huge, as RPA could disrupt data collection, data processing and predictable physical activities which collectively represent $1.3tn in wages in the US and 51% of time spent in US jobs. As an example, 70% to 80% of both front and back-office processes could be automated in the future.

Of course, human employee performance continues to be critical for the correct functioning of business operations. But RPA is going to be a key component to automate time-consuming processes, limit repetitive tasks, enable quick data entry, and ultimately provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

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The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.