Nearly half of the world’s population is able to access the internet nowadays, and this kind of connectivity is now making an impact on nearly all aspects of our lives. Of these connected consumers, as many as 53% have reported that they rely so heavily on their devices that they would be lost without their internet connections.
Consumers are Slowly Stepping Up
While communication purposes are still dominating the frequency of activities that are internet-driven currently, the world’s connected consumers are slowly but surely starting to use their devices for more and more commerce-related activities and for playing the slots NZ has to offer as time goes on. Tech, which serves as the backbone of so many of the most recent advances in trade, is likely to further affect the manner in which consumers browse and buy in the years to come.
This article outlines the trends driven by tech which will most likely transform commerce this year and in the foreseeable future.
The Rise of the Super App
A Super App can be defined as a do-everything mobile application, one which combines a number of aspects of consumers’ worlds into a single platform. Most Super Apps serve five main functions:
- Financial
- Lifestyle
- Retail
- Communication
- Utility
Consumers, particularly those based in Asia, have welcomed these all-in-one applications with open arms because of the cohesive, contextualised experience they provide. The Chinese WeChat app, with its almost one billion users, has becomes the poster child for this revolution, giving the world a preview as to the direction the internet is heading in.
More Functionality Being Offered
Now the titans of tech in the West are trying to emulate their Chinese counterparts’ successes. Major players like Google, Facebook, and Apple keep adding making more functionality available on their core offers, and this could well be laying the groundwork towards their respective products becoming Super Apps in the foreseeable future.
Even though users at this point may be able to execute a number of the most common activities found in a Super App from a single Western brand currently, the experience as it stands is more fragmented. Google, for example, has been choosing to deploy different functionality into various applications, rather than creating one single integrated one like WeChat.
Data is Becoming the New Currency
Data is considered one of the most powerful commodities in the world at the moment. As such, the most valuable companies are no longer ones like Texaco and Standard Oil, but Alphabet and Apple, the biggest data purveyors.
The capacity to make sense of data, including things like past purchase histories, personal preferences, and other types of contextual information, will be what sets the winners and losers apart in the upcoming ten years. Consumers are expecting to be offered unique products workable across a range of gadgets, and the tech delivering this will be of paramount importance.
This surge in consumer data has allowed many brands and companies to more easily create one-on-one type relationships with their end-consumers as they offer tailored packages, recommendations, and experiences.