Written by Martyn Warwick
OTT messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Viber and WeChat will continue to dominate the ‘conversational commerce’ sector in the coming five years but will lose market share to growing competition from Android’s RCS (rich communications services), according to a recent report from Juniper Research.
According to Juniper Research, conversational commerce helps customers throughout an entire purchasing journey, including pre-transaction, where a brand can offer promotions and recommendations to customers, to during transaction, where a customer is making a payment, to post-transaction, which can include delivery updates, customer satisfaction, returns and exchanges: The research house defines it as “The process by which end users of conversational devices, such as smartphones, are able to leverage them for commerce purposes, including retail and banking, through a chat interface.” Conversational commerce takes place across four main types of digital communications platform: Chatbots; OTT (over-the-top) messaging channels; RCS messaging; and voice assistants. And as smartphone use grows and apps become more sophisticated, more and more transactional processes will take place using these platforms.
According to the authors of the Global Conversational Commerce Market 2023-2028 report, the volume and value of conversational commerce messaging will grow significantly in the coming years, but while OTT messaging will continue to be the most popular conversational commerce channel, it will account for just 45% of the market value by 2028, down from 53% in 2024.
