Amazon is adding new tools and features that encourage social shopping on its app, including the option to get product feedback from friends and to upload content tagged with products on its TikTok-like feed, Inspire. Oliver Messenger, director of Amazon Shopping, says the aim is to make shopping more “collaborative” — and it’s also part of Amazon’s ongoing attempt to crack social commerce. Can it work?
One new feature, ‘Create’, is an update to the Inspire feed, which is on the Amazon app. It lets any Amazon customer in the US take or upload a photo or video and tag products. Previously, only influencers who are part of Amazon’s influencer programme could upload to the feed; their content was shown alongside select content from brands and from some user reviews. The Inspire tab, which was introduced in December 2022 and is indicated by a diamond icon on the bottom of the app, is now available to all US users. People can swipe up to go to the next video (similar to Instagram’s Reels), tap a heart icon to like the content and click on a product page to immediately shop the item. In the same way that Amazon’s homepage is tailored to each person’s shopping history, the content shown in the Inspire tab is tailored to each user’s account and preferences, and improves as people interact.
“TikTok users, of course, already share personal data on TikTok simply by viewing, liking and sharing content; Amazon shoppers have a living record of products they’ve bought or want to buy,” says Molly Burke, senior retail analyst at marketplace intermediary Capterra, owned by consultancy Gartner.
The challenge will be in drawing social feed users to Amazon’s utilitarian shopping app. There is no formal incentive for the average person to share their own shoppable content on Inspire, just as there is no incentive for people to submit reviews. “We find that people organically want to do that because they want to give back to the community. They enjoy that aspect of being a tastemaker,” Messenger says. Sometimes, he says, these types of organic sharers ultimately end up applying to Amazon’s influencer programme. Before today’s introduction of the ‘Create’ option for any user, it also showed select high-quality content pulled from user reviews, in addition to content from influencers and content from sellers enrolled in ‘Brand Registry’ (which is a service for brands to register and protect their intellectual property).
So far, it’s unclear how much Inspire is inspiring brands or consumers to engage, says Kiri Masters, head of retail marketplace strategy at digital marketing platform Acadia, who advises brands on Amazon strategy. “I don’t get it. I don’t think any of our clients have seen anything meaningful coming from this either. To me, it's a real nothing-burger.”
Amazon Inspire is the logical follow-up to Amazon Posts, an advertising feature launched in 2019 that enabled sellers to share Instagram-like content on Amazon’s app, says Capterra’s Burke. “If Posts was Amazon’s answer to Instagram’s e-commerce efforts, the Inspire page is its answer to the hugely successful #AmazonTok and #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt,” Burke says.
Amazon’s Inspire page is a compelling direction for Amazon because it offers convenience to both sellers and shoppers, Burke says. Sellers can repurpose vertical video marketing content they’ve created or sourced as user-generated content on social media. (Last year, 82 per cent of small and medium-sized retailers using TikTok said they cross-post their content to other social platforms, according to a Capterra survey.) “Meanwhile, shoppers can browse an endless supply of immersive and helpful content that reflects their personal interests — with the convenience of embedded quick-view product listings so they don’t have to exit the content to add products to their cart.”
She adds that the more informal style of content offers more context on how products actually look and feel, compared to highly retouched or static product pages, and that seeing shopping-centred content in a dedicated shopping app might land better than shopping content that shows up in social media apps designed for entertainment. Amazon accounted for about 40 per cent of all US retail e-commerce sales in 2022, which equates to $2 out of every $5 spent online, according to Insider Intelligence.
Acadia’s Masters says that already, TikTok is a major traffic-driver for Amazon, even if a brand runs a campaign that ultimately directs customers to their own direct-to-consumer site, with no mention of Amazon whatsoever. However, now that TikTok has introduced its own in-app shopping capabilities, “the gravy train is over there, potentially — for Amazon”, she says. This means Amazon is working on more ways to engage customers and increase product discovery, she adds.
For example, Amazon now shows how many times an item has been bought recently to illustrate how popular it is, which borrows from the social media playbook of showing “likes” and “follows”. This is in addition to the Instagram-like content that brands share under product pages as Posts, and the ability for people to follow brands and influencers. Still, Masters says, “I think they’re going to need to do a little bit more to incentivise brands to engage with those discovery tools and choose Amazon over TikTok as they think about top-of-funnel discovery.”
The other new feature, ‘Consult-a-Friend’, gathers feedback on products. If a customer shares an item with a friend from the Amazon app, they’ll be redirected to the app to give their reaction via emoji: heart eyes, sad face or quizzical. The shopper then collects reactions in the app. While other shoppers don’t see the reactions, Amazon gains access to data on how people are reacting to products.
Early testing by Amazon showed that customers are particularly interested in getting feedback on apparel, shoes, electronics and furniture. Amazon customers frequently share products with others, Messenger says; the ‘Share’ button in the Amazon Shopping app has been used “billions” of times this year to share products on messaging services, social media and email, according to the company.
Despite the features’ clear social elements, Messenger refutes the idea that Amazon is trying to take a piece of TikTok’s pie. “We are not trying to be social or social media. We are shopping first and foremost. My job is to help people find and discover products, and then confidently purchase those products.”
This ladders up to “a much bigger vision that we have around improving social shopping and collaborative shopping”, Messenger says. “We always make sure that if you know what you want, you can get that immediately. But, if you need to ask people’s opinions, then this is a really seamless and straightforward way that you can do it.”
Still, just as social media apps have tried to become more connected to shopping, Amazon has been adding features that resemble social media. Since its wide launch in the spring to all US app users, Amazon has seen millions of people using Inspire, Messenger says. Amazon introduced its influencer programme in 2017. Unlike its affiliate programme, which is open to anyone, people must apply and be accepted to the influencer programme; both enable people to earn commissions. Amazon also has a live video shopping format, called Amazon Live, which launched in 2019. And, it launched ‘The Drop’, which enables influencers to make limited-edition capsule collections, in 2019.
Capterra’s Burke advises that brands treat the opportunity the same way they would actual social media sites: monitor the content associated with their brand, foster and maintain relationships with members of the influencer programme and drive shoppers to their content.
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