Abstract:
This qualitative research serves an informative and advisory role to South African brands and marketing firms with regards to whether voice marketing is a viable research and development investment within the next decade. There is currently a lack of research around voice shopping in the South African context and how it can influence ecommerce and consumerism in general. Given that voice shopping has been well integrated in certain first world countries (Klaus & Zaichkowsky, 2021), this study was conducted to analyse how South African Generation Z consumers may adopt voice shopping and how it can be integrated in a South African context.
From a sample of 20 South African Generation Z consumers, 9 were selected using purposive, non-probability sampling for a semi-structured interview process which took place over Google Meet calls. In order to gain a well-rounded South African perspective, 3 participants were each chosen from the country’s most populated cities: Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg.
As a result, it was discovered that there was a common theme of acceptance and positivity amongst South African Generation Z consumers towards voice shopping. These themes were based on the perceptions of convenience, speed and the ability to multi-task or complete tasks hands-free.
For brand strategists, these insights are directly relevant to optimising the consumer decision making journey, in terms of McKinsey’s (2009) model, by leveraging voice assistants as a new channel of commerce. Thus, by investigating the adoption of this technology, this research aims to enable brand managers to prepare for the possible shift towards voice in the near future (Klaus & Zaichkowsky, 2021).
Generation Z consumers were focused on in this study due to their digital nativity; because of this characteristic, these consumers are more accepting of new technology than older generations because they were born in a time where the internet already existed (Turner, 2015)
Due to South Africa’s slow adoption of voice assistants, an early investment in voice commerce innovation would enable a brand to improve its competitive advantage by being the first to introduce a global trend to South Africa as well to open a new avenue of commerce for to South African consumers. Thus, this research is intended to assist South African brands in strengthening their agility by adapting to unprecedented technological changes in the next decade of brand building.
