Live Shopping: Samsung’s strategy to take over

Live Shopping has been widely recognized as one of the biggest trends that will drive the future of the online shopping experience in the next few years. China was the first market to adopt Live Shopping en masse, and even giants in the American market, such as Amazon, have followed suit.

Now, big brands around the world are adding Live Shopping to their ecommerce strategies. Perhaps the most important one amongst them is Samsung, which has implemented Live Shopping in its Latin American markets.

Next is what?

As a trend, Live Shopping has been remarkably successful in positioning itself as "the next big thing", and this perception has consolidated in a surprisingly short time. Samsung, headquartered in Seoul, was particularly close to the birth of Live Shopping, and was one of the first brands to add it to its marketing strategy.

After a couple of tries in its native market, Samsung decided to push for new events in different geographies. During 2020 and 2021, Sweden, Great Britain, India and Spain have had their own Samsung Live Shopping events. Every market has adapted its strategies according to its population's preferences. Some have used YouTube, whereas others have opted for hosting transmissions on their own websites.

For Samsung, Latin America seemed like the final frontier. The push to reach it occurred in the last six months, with events either planned or already executed in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Chile - all countries in which the consumer electronics giant's digital commerce operations are powered by VTEX.

Next is Now

The results for the Live Shopping events in Mexico and Argentina have been promising, in terms of performance and awareness, which justifies Samsung's bet for Live Shopping.

"Samsung is an innovative company and they do recognize this as innovative, but it goes beyond that. I think they found levels of interaction that they were not expecting, which has turned into higher conversion. Today even parts of their new product launching campaigns go through Live Shopping."

Manuel García, Head of Live Shopping at VTEX

The main advantage in this commerce tactic is that localized Live Shopping events can be adapted for each market's attributes, while giving the customer a real time experience that introduces them to a product that they couldn't know as well otherwise. All of this contained inside a blueprint that has proved successful in different markets, and can easily be adopted worldwide.

VTEX Live Shopping App, which is native to the Enterprise Digital Commerce platform, allows for live streaming on multiple channels while connected to the brand's ecommerce, also means that Samsung can host its content on its own website - where conversion is higher - and on social media networks - where engagement is higher - at the same time.

In Mexico, Samsung's website saw a 192% increase in the number of sessions and a 129% increase in the number of items added to cart during the one hour duration of its last event.

"We have multiple opportunities, and Live Shopping shouldn't only be about differentiation. The Mexican market is not used to it yet, but more and more retailers are starting to adopt it and it will soon jump into a type of event that Mexican consumers are expecting from their prefered brands."

Juan José Arciniega, Ecommerce Senior Director at Samsung Electronics Mexico

This just goes to show that, while in Latin American markets Live Shopping might still be in its infancy, the trend is bound to take the retail world by storm sooner rather than later. And Samsung just turned on tomorrow.

DISCLAIMER: It is important to note that historical financial information or operational KPIs may not be comparable with publicly-filed information at SEC, since VTEX did not report its financials in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) prior to 2019 and certain KPI definitions may differ from publicly-filed information. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on figures published before July 21st, 2021 as they may not be comparable to the metrics disclosed from the IPO onwards.

Written byLalo Aguilar

Lalo is a journalist with more than 5 years of experience, who now is focusing his story-telling abilities on the world of ecommerce and the quick revolution happening around it.