Jason & Scot Show Episode 5 Chat Commerce

A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 5 covers Chat Commerce including consumer behaviors in Eastern & Western markets, a discussion about Generation Z, new retail concepts including Birch Box store, Target Wonderland Popup, and B8ta store, and the announcement of Walmart’s new mobile payments system.

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Scot attended the Business Insider Ignition show in New York City this week.  One of the key topics was a discussion about chat commerce on apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, Line, Viber, Kakao and Kik.  Chat and and even commerce via chat are huge in eastern markets but not as big in the West.  Many of these platforms host chatbots (similar to apps that run on the chat platform) which are exploding, currently there are more bots put on WeChat than there are new websites added to the internet every day in China.  It’s an open question if the current consumer behavior is China is an accurate predictor for how Western consumers will behave in the future, but there is some evidence to suggest that chat platforms in the West are rapidly growing.  Facebook with it’s revamped Messenger app, and it’s acquisition of WhatsApp appears best positioned to take advantage.  Western marketing should definitely be looking East to learn how to leverage these chat platforms for customer service, marketing, and commerce.

There was also a discussion of Generation Z (the cohort after Millennials).  The New Yorker published results of an MTV survey in which Generation self-titled themselves the “Founders Generation.”

Generation Z have some key differences from Millennials:

Scot visited the Birchbox flagship store in SOHO, and the Target Wonderland Store in Chelsea (Star Tribune Article).

B8ta store, a venture funded connected store, designed by a team of Ex-Google Nest employees, featuring internet of things products opened in in Palo Alto (Tech Review Article)

Walmart announced their new Mobile Payments system called Walmart Pay.

Jason will be visiting Seoul Korea next week, and we hope to record Episode 6 from Seoul.

Episode 5 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday December 10th, 2015.