The retail group has rolled out the new service, called Amazon Live, bringing more than 150 creators to host livestreams and plug products in the videos. The idea is, influencers, with already a large following, will drive their fans to the shopping app and influence them into buying products. They get a cut each time they are able to make a sale.
Amazon Live is currently hosting livestreams across several categories, including electronics, fashion and beauty, and home decor. The videos were averaging 30 to 600 simultaneous views at the time of publication. The company says it will run 15 livestreams a day between 10 am to 1 am. During the company’s ongoing festive sale, it expects to stream over 450 hours of content.
The launch follows Walmart-owned Flipkart, Amazon’s chief rival in India, also testing a similar offering on its app early in 2022. Amazon itself quietly launched Live in the US in 2019, attempting to get a slice of a nascent shopping trend made popular by YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
The live content on Amazon will include streams from mainstream celebrities including Bollywood actors and sports players. Other than offering livestreams, Amazon Live will allow customers to communicate directly with influencers through comments. This brings the requirement of moderation, to avoid instances of abuse and hatred.
Representatives from Amazon stated that the company wants to bring different ‘thought leaders’ in particular spaces and it looks at topics where these popular persons are respected for their thought leadership in that space. So, the movie celebrity could be there but it’s not just because there are movie celebrities, they are movie celebrities but probably they know really well about dressing for a special event.
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