While livestream commerce becomes deeply settled into the structure of ecommerce in China and the rest of east Asia, and continues to sweep through the United States, its functionality has also made its way to Europe.
According to a recent survey, 70% of Europeans who were asked said that they are open to the idea of livestream shopping.
Livestream ecommerce within Europe is becoming more popular and spreading into more countries. The shopping trend started in China and then to the rest of Southeast Asia. Yet now, shoppers in Europe have been increasingly watching live shopping events, and finding inspiration online when it comes to fashion.
Back in China, there are 50,000 livestream events each and every day that pull in around 260 million pairs of eyes. Livestream shopping is expected to take in $296 billion by the end of 2021.
The modern teleshopping
Despite livestream ecommerce being relatively new, it’s actually just a reincarnation of teleshopping, made famous by channels such as QVC. Yet, it’s not quite exactly the same. While they both involve users shopping live on a screen, the medium is different: the TV set is not necessarily, just your phone.
The differences are, in fact, deeper, because livestream shoppers are better able to interact with the brand directly through the social media chat function as well as other functionalities on screen.
In another study, 70% of consumers in Europe, when asked if they would want to shop during a livestream ecommerce event, responded favorably. Yet interestingly, while the most popular cohort of livestream shoppers in Asia are millennials, those in Europe are mostly between the ages of 30 and 40.
Beauty brands
There are around 1 in 5 fashion and beauty brands that have already started to broadcast livestream shopping events across its social media channels. And what’s more, 1 in 3 brands have put on at least one live shopping event before.
“While beauty companies rely on regular livestreams, fashion companies offer occasional events,” according to the services company Arvato. “Both branches clearly prefer the integration of live shopping into their own webshops but advertise events on social media channels.”
Where it’s at
During 2020 the popularity of mobile apps exploded. Their use actually rose 50% throughout the year. Brands and retailers can use this development to get in touch with their customers directly through app-based livestream shopping events.
It’s possible, also, to organize and manage livestream shopping across social media. The issue, though, is that Facebook Live, for example, hasn’t been used by brands in the study mentioned above. We’ll see in the near future which platforms brands feel comfortable using for live events. But for now, around 70% of livestream shopping events are currently being streamed on the website of brands and retailers.
Yet as livestream ecommerce further develops and spreads into Western ecommerce practices, we should expect social media companies to develop alongside this to better host live shopping events.
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