Z from Generation-Z.
Yes, because the time has come to abandon the Millennial generation and to throw ourselves together into the new challenge. Millennials have already been in our CRM panels for years but their evolution and the changes they have contributed to are just one of the generational shifts we will see in the coming years.
The near future is full of questions like these… What will the internet be like for the new generations? Will social networks still exist? What evolution awaits us for smartphones? And how will Smart-Speakers change our purchasing behavior? Will AIs actually be useful purchasing assistants?
All questions to understand what our online purchasing behavior will be like in the near future. Two years ago I used the term hybrid to define the new Retail/E-commerce (Omni) model that we would be facing in the next few years.
Today, more than a hybrid, I think everything will be liquid and like water it will permeate all the surfaces it comes into contact with. Evolution.
Gartner at “Amid AI, privacy laws, diversity and cloud, CIOs must harness the chaos of continuous change” also predicted the main mar-tech trends for 2019 by updating its Hype Cycle.
From 2019 to 2020 we will still be in the maturation phase of AI (scale up through shared protocols, easy to understand: Alexa does not speak to Siri and Cortana speaks for itself), the consolidation of the Blockchain and the overcoming of its limits with respect to private laws, quantum computers, Autonomous Driving, connected Home, Smart Robots, IoT platform, Mixed Reality, … There will still be room for Social Networks, for a few more years before the migration from Social Networks to Social Commerce become only E-Commerce platforms. Indie Influencers will finally disappear with the return of the big Publishers who, at least from this point of view, will be able to go back to working on quality rather than chasing after the trend of snack-content. On smartphones I have only found hypotheses on dimensions, increasingly sophisticated screens, face recognition, payment systems, ... nothing special.
Let's focus now on E-Commerce or rather on what I would like to define Z-Commerce precisely to give it a space of its own.
Let's start with the new generations. Navigators in an increasingly huge and engaging digital sea, they are not only digital natives but represent the beginning of the evolution of our species in contact with an increasingly technological world. A process that will never stop!
And during my research on the new generations I found a series of beautiful definitions that compare the two Generations we are addressing, the Millennials (next present) VS Gen-Z (future present).
The Z-Commerce.
To understand what Z-Commerce will be like, I want to start from a broader concept. Instead of talking about Customer Experience I want to introduce the concept of Life Experience. In the concept of liquidity, the current E-Commerce will no longer be a URL to which we will link. It will be more natural and even more instinctive. How to ask Siri to make restaurant reservations. How to ask Alexa to call Uber. What will the weather be like? What am I wearing today? The experiences that we will live in the next 5 years will be lived naturally, completely integrated with our lifestyle which will obviously have evolved and changed its habits and behaviors. This is not only told by the mar-tech analysts at Gartner but also by the behavior of young people and their relationship with technologies.
How will we live in 5 years?
Today, with a simple sentence, we can summarize the current lifestyle "The age of digital speed".
The digital we know, that of recent years, has made everything faster, including life and emotions. We weren't ready and many looked for ways to escape. Fast and frenetic, digital has forced our lives to be more synthetic, abandoning us to pills of "desires" lasting a handful of seconds, hours... The trends have been: beauty, aesthetics, well-being, new experiences, new stories, sharing , …
New lifestyles have advanced in this world and in Social Networks we have found the answer to the desire to be protagonists and participate in the life of all those who have thrown it in our face, mere mortals or the rich and famous, from every corner of the world .
And if I look at E-Commerce, I've seen it born and grow like a child with a thousand questions and fears that slowly found more and more answers and certainties.
Some children ran more than others, demonstrating talents and with courage and ruthlessness achieved and turned their dreams into reality.
Other children, slower and in need of concrete certainties, grew up more slowly but consolidating their certainties in actions.
Still others have been schizophrenic, constantly changing, copying others, mistaking them for models and reaping disappointments.
The way to success is to "find your way" by trying, failing and trying again.
Tomorrow. Let's start by breaking down the formula into factors related to the theme of the future Life Experience.
Speed. It will always be greater. It is an evolutionary consequence of man. But this time we will need to control it as the spot "Power is nothing without control" said. It will be so fast that without help we will not be able to steer it. And that's why AIs are coming. AI will be our personal assistants, increasingly integrated, invasive, they will allow us to have greater control of the present and tomorrow and will assist our purchases in an increasingly natural way. And here is someone already talking about Human augmentation and in the Gartner Hype Cycle it becomes one of the next evolutions to keep under control. I'm so attracted by the concept that in the book I'm writing I tell of a society that has grown twenty years after us.
Emotions. We will increasingly be of the opinion that one life is not enough and that we will have to make the most of it by allowing ourselves more lives in one life. We will love more strongly but we will also accept that it is for a little while, without being scandalized and with a different and more mature respect. We will experience increasingly strong and increasingly opposing emotions. And this will also be reflected in purchases. We will be an even more split society between total infidels (many) and totally loyal (few) to the Brands. It will be the Brands that will have to create intelligent ecosystems. This fact of field choices will be abandoned (either Nike or Adidas, or Coca&Cola or Pepsi, or Apple or Samsung, etc…). The mix and personal style will return.
Protagonism. It will no longer be the era of "everything makes a show" and easy protagonism (a post for a moment of protagonism). The sense of sharing and participation will change. We will come back more intimate. We will need more protected but also more expressive digital spaces. In such a world, Z-Commerce will necessarily have to be liquid. It will live in the folds of our lives and our spaces. We will be able to buy everything but also rent it for minutes or hours. It will be less and less a matter of possession but of use until the world becomes a new DIY open-air factory (in 2012 I wrote on this topic "A co-creation system not limited to content").
And from the point of view of purchases, we will buy with the famous 1-click by Jeff Bezos which has meanwhile transformed into 1-AI-Command “Siri will you buy me the Nike LoopBlast I had yesterday Mark at the gym? If you find them red better, otherwise dark. And if you also find that Dolce&Gabbana sweater that was in Vogue…”. Siri will shop for us based on what you understand and learn from us. Possible?! In the liquid world everything is easier. Have. To rent. Pay. Return. Give.
And what are we going to do in the meantime? We will no longer go to shops, shopping centres... We will dedicate time to the things we like because "life is one and we would like to live it to the fullest with greater attention to the passage of time".
To conclude.
I think we will never sail in that world again. The smartphone will be truly ocular with headphones implanted like little patches behind the ears, invisible. Finally we will no longer see scenes like today, of people walking and driving their cars with their eyes turned to that little screen that changed everything! Steve you left us right “in the middle of the road…”.
