Amazon dominates voice purchasing – here’s what customers are buying

Chart of the day: Amazon has become, quite easily, the dominant player in voice purchasing with 90% of all spending, according to research by OC&C Strategy Consultants.

The research also showed what customers are using home voice assistants for, which is shown in the chart below. Over 6 in 10 (62%) consumers in the US who took part in this survey, have bought something at least once using their voice assistant.

Most customers who use voice assistant for purchasing have bought electronics, entertainment-related products or grocery products. Clothing and furniture might be quite difficult to purchase, due to sizes and styles, as these categories are less popular. From experience, it's easier to ask Alexa to add butter (including brand name) to your basket than "oak coffee table" especially when you might not know what the coffee table looks like.

The research also found people do use both voice search and the Amazon website or app, to complete their purchase or check out what the product looks like and review the product details before buying.

Consumers do spend less using voice search compared to online though, as shown in the visual below.

Smart voice assistants are much more trusted for smaller purchases compared to bigger ones, across most categories. Spend amount was particularly lower for electronics and homeware though.

• Source: OC&C Strategy Consultants 
• Sample: 1095 people in the US and 395 in the UK. All use voice assistants.
• Recommended resource: Marketing Technology and Innovation guide