#AmazonCart: A Tweet is all it Takes

This is for all those who hate to leave their Twitter feeds, but suddenly want to buy some product they have just spotted on their feed. The world's largest e-commerce marketplace, Amazon has introduced a new way of shopping - for the Twitterati. Called the #AmazonCart, buyers can now add products they discover on Twitter to their Amazon.in shopping carts without leaving Twitter. The feature was introduced in the US and UK in May.

Customers will also get a reply tweet from @MyAmazonIN as well as an email from when an item is successfully added to the cart. As with any other item in their cart, customers are not obliged to buy items added through the hashtag. They remain there until they either check out or remove them.

For those who have not connected their Twitter and Amazon accounts, a tweet asking them to connect their accounts to enable the new feature will be sent. For any products or deals that are out of stock, unavailable, or expired, customers will get a tweet to indicate status of unavailability. However, the service wont work if one's Twitter account is protected.

Chatting up customers

The tie-up, say many, is a critical one for Amazon in the Indian market, as it is trying to compete with Flipkart and other domestic e-commerce players. Amazon had launched its Indian platform Amazon.in in June 2013 (although it was present since February 2012 through Junglee.com) and since then Amazon India has come up with different initiatives to engage with consumers online. The company had earlier rolled out a promotional film made around Valentine's Day on the digital medium. The film ends with the thought of 'Shop for everything you love'.

Amazon's idea has been to create interesting conversations that resonate with consumers who are online. However, with this initiative, Amazon is looking at cashing in on the 'engaged' consumer.

For Twitter, this is an ideal opportunity to enable e-commerce on its platform. The company has been collaborating with various brands to monetise its platform in India. The Pepsi Tweet20, Starsports.com video replay feature and The Vodafone free access partnership are some of its recent initiatives. Besides, Twitter has also partnered TV channels and DTH providers where customers will be able see what the world is tweeting about popular TV programmes.

"The Twitter-Amazon agreement provides another tool to engage online shoppers as well as to extend relationships on Twitter to the core of their e-commerce platforms," says Arvinder Gujral, business development director, Twitter Southeast Asia and India.

Online shoppers in India are increasingly going mobile and are interacting more with their smartphones. The #AmazonCart feature is expected to be a help for these users as they won't have to switch apps while buying what they saw and liked on Twitter.

Moreover, since its launch in the US, it has been observed that many publishing houses and authors have been using this feature to promote their books. Ramesh Srivats, managing director and CEO, TenTenTen, a digital products company thinks that it a cool feature, especially for books and technology products. "Many people," he says, "share recommendations on Twitter, which are often acted upon by their friends and followers." So, #AmazonCart becomes a quick and useful way to act on these social recommendations in a very here-and-now manner.

However, books and pen drives are low-risk categories and don't require much trial by the consumer before buying. Will it work for other products as well? Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength says that he would bet on items that are low cost and easy to understand from a single image (such as mobile phone accessories, pen drives, merchandise products for say, IPL teams, films or college merchandise).

Conversion or conversation?

Amazon India had less than 10,000 followers on Twitter till May 2014. That figure has risen to close to 16,000 followers (as per SocialBakers Data) now. Does that mean more conversions? "This has interesting hype value and will give Amazon one more talking point. Beyond that, in terms of actual impact on sales, I am not so sure," offers Mehta. According to him, impulsive shoppers could end up quickly adding and interesting product to their carts, via this feature. "But whether they later get to Amazon and actually complete the purchase is to be seen. Having said that, it will definitely contribute to some additional purchase interest, and part of it also going and closing out as a sale," he explains.

Mehta also feels that the feature can be a part of a strategy to drive purchase intent, beyond just generating curiosity. There will be a certain kind of impulsive shopper and a certain kind of impulsive category that may generate good results.

Srivats hopes that the feature will become more intelligent. "Most product recommendations made by people are unlikely to contain Amazon product links. So, a system that can cleverly identify the product and then add it to the cart would make it even more magical and intuitive," he adds.

Amazon Inc forayed into India last year with a country-specific online marketplace Amazon.in. It saw revenues for the first quarter (ended March 31, 2014) rise 23 per cent to $19.7 billion from $16.1 billion last year. It has over 17 million products across categories.