British chain Argos is leaping into the voice-shopping fray, partnering with Google and its Home speakers to enable customers to browse and purchase more than 20,000 products from the catalogue retailer.
There are more than 50 million smart speakers in U.S. households, with market share spread among few power players, according to research firm CIRP. Despite Amazon’s early lead in the voice race thanks to Alexa and the ecosystem of Echo speakers, Google has been steadily eroding Amazon’s share in the space, getting its own smart devices into more shoppers’ hands. While Amazon still dominates with 70 percent market share, Google maintains 24 percent when looking just at the U.S., though globally, the tech giant has seen sales skyrocket 483 percent to outsell Amazon.
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“Voice technology has the potential to [revolutionize] how we shop in the future,” Argos CEO John Rogers said in announcing the new partnership. “Digital home assistants have soared in popularity over the past year and people are increasingly looking to their smart devices to help with the smooth running of their lives.
Following in Walmart’s footsteps in the U.S., Argos, owned by Sainsbury’s, is adding Voice Shop as a new way to help consumers access its products. Shoppers can use the “Hey Google, Ask Argos” command to access the retailer’s selection of toys, apparel, electronics, home goods and more, and once their purchase is completed, they can retrieve their items the same day from one of the more than 850 Argos stores throughout the U.K. Customers can also ask the Google Assistant to check product stock levels in their nearby store. Argos said 95 percent of people in the U.K. reside within 10 miles of a store.
“Argos is a digitally-led business at the forefront of technology and it’s really exciting that we are harnessing the simplicity of voice ordering with the convenience and popularity of Click & Collect to make our customers’ lives easier,” Rogers said. “We predict that the Voice Shop service will be a big hit and we will develop and refine the offer further as we get feedback from our customers.”
The news comes on the heels of an eyebrow-raising report from The Information whose sources indicate than just 2 percent of Alexa users have used their smart speakers to make a purchase this year—furthering the notion that voice commerce still is a ways away from reaching a tipping point.
