Let's Chat About Mom

Why conversational commerce is on the rise— and perfect for Mother’s Day.

- Lisa Lacy

With Mother’s Day right around the corner, many consumers are frantically Googling “2018 Mother’s Day gifts” to come up with last-minute ideas, often needing to sift through pages of search results to find that perfect gift. But what if that search could be interactive, personalized and, well, conversational?

Conversational commerce could be the future of shopping for more intimate holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day as chatbots and voice assistants are capable of establishing relationships with consumers and can make purchasing the right gift easier.

According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are going to drop some coin on Mother’s Day gifts this year with spending expected to exceed $23 billion—that’s $180 per consumer. Within that Mother’s Day total, consumers will shell out an anticipated $4.6 billion on jewelry, $4.4 billion on outings like dinner and brunch, and $2.6 billion on flowers, per NRF.

Those categories are ripe for conversational commerce as consumers with Amazon Echo devices, for example, can tap into skills from 1-800-Flowers to order gifts, OpenTable to make restaurant reservations and Allrecipes to figure out how to make breakfast in bed, an Amazon rep said. (They can also ask Alexa for ideas, as well as for a Mother’s Day joke, haiku or rap.)