Contextual commerce refers to the ability for buyers to purchase, or be directed to goods or services that they are looking for at the moment they’re searching them, alongside a quick and easy integrated checkout experience. As consumers, we encounter these types of services every day, for example, when we use an app to call and pay for a taxi with a couple of taps, or when we buy a shirt through Instagram. In today’s competitive global marketplace, merchants have to be increasingly creative in the ways that they build connections and form loyalties with their customers, in an often offline and online blurred space.
Ecommerce platform Shopify has an extended ecosystem built through partnerships with diverse professionals, such as app developers and payment providers throughout the world. This means that when a merchant onboards their business to Shopify, they have the opportunity to integrate applications from around the world in order to help their businesses in a variety of ways, from aiding them in their marketing campaigns to adding special features to their online store theme. By using Shopify, merchants have the ability to create such contextual commerce spaces for their buyers and, in some ways, in order to compete with marketplaces like Amazon, it is paramount that they do so.
By conducting field research with Shopify merchants in Germany and Japan, I was able to uncover some of the ways in which merchants are navigating today’s fluctuating retail landscape and building their customer bases through contextual commerce. Many merchants use social media as a way to blend offline and online experiences, while creating real-time relationships with their buyers.
Yozo, a merchant I interviewed in Japan, is the owner of the coffee business “Kurasu”, which includes two retail coffee shops with locations in Japan and Singapore, a remote team, and an integrated online store with a strong Instagram presence. As a curator, Yozo sells products that are simultaneously being sold in online marketplaces like Rakuten. In order to compete with these marketplaces, Yozo built a strong brand for Kurasu that features baristas from its retail locations on its Instagram feed, and allows for buyers to ask questions about them, build relationships with them, and feel as if they know them when they visit retail locations. Additionally, many of the products being used in the coffee shop and by the baristas are also available to buy in Yozo’s store via Instagram. Thus, a buyer can find a photo of a coffee kettle on Yozo’s Instagram, tap it, and go directly to the checkout on Yozo’s Shopify store. This way, Yozo is able to use the context of Instagram in order to both build a community with Kurasu’s customers while increasing its conversion rates.
A merchant I interviewed in Germany, Matthias, runs a successful online kitchen appliance store (Generation YES) targeted towards middle-aged women in Germany and Austria.His primary campaign, and the way he gets many of the conversions in his store, is through his Facebook page, where he uploads videos of himself in his kitchen studio making food with his products. The videos are short, usually less than a minute in duration, and provide viewers with a link to the recipe he’s making on his Shopify store alongside the product itself. That way, a buyer scrolling through their Facebook feed can watch the video, click to see the recipe, and make another click to buy the product in less than five minutes. Matthias maintains a strong relationship with his customers through his videos.
Using social media is just one tactic that merchants are practicing in order to engage their buyers in contextual commerce and increase conversion rates for their businesses. Other methods include remarketing campaigns through Google AdWords and coupon codes in emails to subscribe buyers to mailing lists.
The ways in which consumers buy are changing at a rapid rate, as new technologies are being introduced around the world. Technologies such as social networking channel WeChat are allowing for contextual commerce to occur at faster rates, by using consumer information on things like their interests, their social media use, and previously purchased products.
As the commerce space along with buyer consumption patterns continue to change and evolve, entrepreneurs too will have to adapt to the changing environment in order to grow their businesses.
About Leia Atkinson
Leia Atkinson is an international markets researcher and trained cultural anthropologist at Shopify. She has years of ethnographic field research experience in Tokyo, Japan, looking at youth subcultures, work, social movements, and identity formation. Since joining Shopify, she has been focusing on expanding cross-company understanding of markets that Shopify is looking to grow into, in order to help with the localisation efforts.
About Shopify
Shopify is the leading cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform. Merchants can use the software to design, set up, and manage their stores across multiple sales channels, including web, social media, brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops. Shopify’s platform makes enterprise-level technology available to businesses of all sizes. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify currently powers over 600,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries.
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