The Evolution of Shoppability

Today, shoppability is everywhere. It’s the new “Buy on Instagram” feature, a “Buy Now” call-to-action on a display ad, or the interactive videos you come across that let you add the featured products directly to your digital cart with one click. Whether you’re familiar with the specific term or concept, it’s more than likely that you’ve interacted with a shoppable activation before. 

Why the sudden surge? Companies in all industries are realizing the potential to shorten the path to purchase by reaching shoppers in the right contexts, when they directly connect content to commerce. However, as shoppability becomes the latest trend, the meaning of true shoppability is blurred as more brands and retailers seek out every opportunity possible to drive purchases.It’s imperative that brands consider the context of the content that they’re activating, in order to provide a strong user experience that will actually lead to purchase.

In lifestyle verticals like beauty and fashion, using shoppability can successfully turn inspiration into checkout. These DTC brands are particularly successful when it comes to shoppability conversions for two reasons. First, they’ve taken time to understand consumers’ behaviors and have met the shopper where they are: social media (more often than not). Shoppers use content from TikTik to YouTube to discover products and seek out reviews. These shoppers are hand-raisers, identifying themself as potential customers from the moment they land on the given influencers page.

The second reason DTC brands in beauty and fashion easily find success through shoppability tactics lies in buying patterns. Generally, Americans buy lifestyle products one or a couple items at a time, spending between $26 to $50 monthly on beauty and personal care and $161 monthly on clothing.

Unfortunately, grocery purchasing doesn’t work like this.

Self-service in grocery stores has only existed since the 1900s, prior to which employees would take customers’ grocery lists and pull inventory themselves. This opened a whole new environment for advertisers to leverage. Advertise to shoppers in shopping mode who were presented with a plethora of choice among various brands and products: the original contextual commerce. Fast forward 100-some odd years later, and there is now an entire $100 billion industry dedicated to this: shopper marketing. This industry runs the whole gamut of in-store marketing campaigns: the ads attached to the physical shopping cart, end caps (the products that are displayed at the end of the aisle), manufacturer-subsidized sales and more. This valuation of $100 billion in just over 100 years is driven by CPG companies that recognize the importance of context above all else to influence and advertise to shoppers, as close to the point of purchase as possible.

Grocery ecommerce developed late, compared to ecommerce in other verticals. Because innovation and adoption of grocery ecommerce was slower than in other categories, CPG and grocery brands kept the majority of their marketing spend in brick and mortar. However, the coronavirus pandemic forced more people online for their groceries than ever before, accelerating the shift to ecommerce by 5 years. This meant that grocery brands had to adapt faster than ever to keep up with the growth in demand and reach consumers in digital contexts. That meant influencing the new shopper who makes their purchasing decisions online, not at the shelf.

Generally speaking, the most popular digital activations are paid search or branded landing pages. It’s a no-brainer--people go to retailer sites to shop, so it’s imperative for brands to advertise there. 

But just as other product verticals, grocery and food brands shifted focus to search for commerce-enablement opportunities outside of the retailer.com. Shopper marketers need to look beyond on-platform solutions to reach shoppers and move them through the purchasing funnel. They need to understand the context that inspires food decisions. Long-form cooking videos, influencer sites, TikTok food trends, curated Pinterest boards… They all lead back to recipes.

Food and grocery brands that aim to commerce-enable content and ads need to leverage the context of the purchase or promoted product as part of a larger grocery shop to take consumers from inspiration to checkout. And while online grocery adoption has increased more over the last year than since its inception, many shoppers are still wary of purchasing items like fresh chicken or avocados online.

So what gets shoppers over that finish line with those more particular items? Inspiration. According to a survey conducted by Chicory, 80.25% of consumers use recipes to create their shopping lists. Shoppable ads within recipes offer the right context to assist a shopper in beginning their grocery list. And this is far more contextually relevant than hitting them with a shoppable ad for Oreos in their Facebook feed sidebar.

Recipes are the only true off-retailer platforms that work for commerce-enablement in grocery, because people aren’t going to click on a display ad to buy one or a couple of food items.

A contextual commerce strategy is a must-have for brands layering shoppability onto ads across any platform. By offering contextually relevant advertising that is commerce-enabled, brands across all verticals can reach people where they’re making shopping decisions pre-retailer and offer some welcomed help during the consumer’s path to purchase.