10 ways 5G tech could potentially impact E-commerce and Retail (Final Part — Remaining 7 ways)
And I am back — to complete the listicle that I left off. Midway. Abruptly. While I enjoy sharing ideas, I also want some pieces of the journey included in my articles for my sake more than anything else. I wish to learn more about the person I was when I was putting all this together when I reflect on these perhaps 10, 15, or 20 years from now. The truth is — I didn’t feel like completing the article when I was only three points in, but I still wanted to post for a feel-good factor. I wanted to redeem myself at that moment while a lot else was going on with me in my life and I could use the positivity I feel after having published something. So there you go. I hope you took something away from that as well. If not — sorry for this para ;-P
Anyway (you know when you have reached an “anyway” moment, don’t you! Lol !!). So where were we? 5G will enable a lot as I have mentioned ad nauseam. Why not delve into it just some more then? Just in case :-)
Advertising will be more effective
Ever scrolled past an advertisement on an article before it even loaded? I am sure you have. For ads to have a chance of being optimally effective, companies rely more on what sort of an internet connection their prospective consumers have than you would normally imagine. With 5G, there is a higher probability of the consumer viewing the ad in the few seconds by which they will scroll past it. The ad will be loaded better, the marketing message will be received by the consumer and there is a higher likelihood of conversion.
Where there is further incremental value is that there will be lesser constraint on the kinds of media an ad agency or your marketing team may be able to use within these ads that need to load fast to be effective. Now that we have captain 5G on board, speed isn’t quite an issue. Picture quality keeps increasing you say — but this 5G jump in speed is more than capable of handling that and some. Teams will experiment with rich media content to understand what works best, and so the era will be ripe for experiments and innovation in advertising.
Live streaming shopping
Currently, you are more likely to sell more through live streaming in China. That is a fact. As that trend permeates through other countries the synergy with 5G and its ability to augment the experience is a welcome bonus. There are likely to be experiments that will be bordering overkill with multiple influencer streams with diverse products on a screen to enable consumers to view as many products as possible to boost conversion. It is about probabilities but it is also about focus. Organisations will experiment to see where is the balance. Where is the point of diminishing returns?
Just as an example, Walmart partnered with TikTok to enable a shoppable livestream experience for its US customers. People engaged with popular creators while shopping for what they required. Walmart does say that they netted 7X more views than they anticipated which to me is neither here nor there. That is a metric I wouldn’t share within my own team let alone a public facing article. They did another live stream shopping experience with TikTok in March but haven’t done another one since. I would assume that is you get 7X the views, you would actually do it more frequently. That is just a read of my metrics and hihglighting my skepticism. It does not however detract from the popularity of livestream shopping and how 5G can embellish it further.
Live streaming shopping is popular because of influencers and once 5G takes off, there are more members from a group following an influencer likely to get a better viewing experience and thus purchase.
Grocery aggregation/packing with the help of Drones and AI
Services such as Instacart blew up during the pandemic as people did their grocery shopping while at home. One of the great things about using Instacart is that in case you are not happy with the quality produce or product that you are delivered, you do get a refund. It is a waste though and it would be better if we had a way to cut down on such instances.
With 5G and drones it will be possible to share images of things seamlessly. Additionally, AI can help figure out what produce has gone bad or is likely to go bad. Combining these technologies in the presene of 5G, producers will be able to pack together the best quality produce and reduce waste at the source. What that would mean is that fewer “bad apples” get to the grocery stores and thus into your homes. The e-commerce and retail experience for all families and communities will eventually be better.
Decentralising operations
There will be new options available to redesign supply, logistics and operations. The transmission of rich information across the value chain through the combination of IoT, AI and 5G will enable businesses to develop more frugal contracts and procure commoditised items from different vendors rather than have dedicated partnerships.
This will embed much needed flexibility within supply chains but will be hard to rally around. Such a decision will need a more than successful pilot for firms to get to a level where they will be able to assure their board on strategy.
Stimulating purchases at events
The ease of purchasing something at a click of a button has driven e-commerce to unforeseen levels. The higher the ease, the better the output, and more the sales. Imagine yourself drinking a glass of wine that your fitness app detects to stabilize your heart rate at a much smoother level and more seamlessly than your regular choice you have at home. Your phone sends you a notification through this app — “Do you wish to get more of what you are having? These are your options based on your predefined criteria preferences for shopping: Nearest: Abc | Quickest: Def | Cheapest: Ghi”.
Isn’t this still possible without 5G? Yes, it is. But to do it at scale you need what 5G brings to you. Moreover, when things get crowded in the sense that there are multiple devices hogging the same network then there tend to be issues galore. One of 5G’s great assets is this very alleviation of the noise and congestion at instances where there are likely to be crowds. At events you have hundreds and thousands of devices all competing with each other for a share of the bandwidth. Once that issue is relatively a lot more manageable, then the fun of e-commerce stimulation at events can be further stimulated at unprecedented levels.
Retail buying experience enhanced
While AR helps in remote buying as mentioned earlier in Part 1 of this piece, it will also help the in-store buying experience. Production cost for numerous advertisement type media embedded with the products in a synergistic fashion is bound to promote sales.
So where does 5G come into this? Well, when there are numerous stores in a mall needing high speed and designated network bandwidth for augmented reality applications, 5G will come to the fore to enable all this and more.
Payments and security at checkout
The adoption of mobile wallets is increasing. Smoother the checkout experience, higher will be the conversion and so any merchant in that environment will thrive. Additionally, if payments take more than a stipulated amount of time they get timed out. In such scenarios where there is an increase in mobile wallets being used for payment transactions, 5G will aid in ensuring that a significantly higher percentage of those transactions go through and do so smoothly. All this is to say that e-commerce will get a significant boost when each merchant within the ecosystem is able to complete more transactions during busy periods.
Conclusion
The intent of this listicle as with all my other articles is not to emphasise how technology will change things and have an impact. That is there for sure, but my core purpose is to seek and attempt to explain a collaboration of technologies, and to try spotting opportunities for business that others may perhaps build upon. I have uncovered points which I felt were areas where aspiring entrepreneurs can drill down deeper to understand some underlying pain points that need addressing and can leverage either 5G or any other upcoming technology to create incremental value through product innovations in various industries.
I sincerely believe that the proliferation of entrepreneurship can help us alleviate wealth and then education issues in that order. I wish to share as many ideas as possible in the hope of enabling ideation for startups that will perhaps foster similar values. The coming of 5G shall be an adventure, and one that e-commerce will be able to leverage in a variety of ways.
