The global spend via conversational commerce will near $135 billion by 2027; rising from $39 billion in 2023, according to the latest data from Juniper Research.
The study finds that, by 2027, 47% of spend will be attributable to OTT-based channels, including WhatsApp and WeChat. Specifically, as ‘super apps’ increasingly provide multiple services within a single interface – including payments, commerce and messaging – much more engaging commerce interactions will be orchestrated. The research urges OTT apps to fully integrate such features in order to reduce friction or risk losing traffic.
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Asia Pacific to dominate
The research report, Conversational Commerce: Business Model Analysis, Value-added Services & Market Forecasts 2022-2027, also shows that Asia Pacific will account for 75% of total spend over conversational commerce channels in 2027. This will be driven by country-specific apps such as WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk embedding in-house payment solutions.
The research identifies that the versatility of these apps, which combine features from WhatsApp, Twitter, PayPal and Uber, will be key to developing a strong digital marketplace; offering an improved user experience.
Research author Elisha Sudlow-Poole explains: “As the development of ‘superapps’ will create a new ecosystem for business messaging, communication service providers must ensure that they have strong, proactive partnerships with the most popular superapps to maximise their role in the conversational commerce value chain.”
How must the West emulate this success?
The research forecasts that the total number of OTT-based conversational commerce users in Europe and North America will rise by 179% to reach 33.4 million by 2027. For these regions to emulate the success of Asia Pacific, communication platform providers must ensure that they are able to support the influx of traffic from OTT messaging apps, as well as the ability to provide depth within these channels through the use of value-added services. This will ensure they remain an integral part of the ecosystem, as the capabilities of OTT messaging apps increase.
