How Instagram Will Become America’s Next Mall
Credit: Ari Lewis
What's The Story?
Instagram aspires to be the digital mall for Gen-Z and the generations that follow. In May 2019, Instagram Shopping was announced. This feature allowed Instagram users to purchase a product inside the app. Recently, Instagram has expanded the program to now include a new shopping page and is replacing (in beta) the activity button with an Instagram Shop Button.
How Will Instagram Shop Capture Attention?
Long ago, way back in the late 20th century, teenagers idled in malls. Then they bought something on occasion. But they came to the mall, be it heated or cooled, to occupy space. In the smelly domain of teen spirit, the mall was a place to hang out that happened to have stores.
It wasn’t just teenagers who loved malls, but their owners, Simon Property Group, the largest shopping mall operator in the United States, earned $2.13B in net income in 2016. Malls were, and still are big business. But in a few years, they’ll be gone.
Consumers are shopping online. Teenagers don’t want to just shop online but hang out online. And that’s where Instagram comes in.
For Gen Z, Instagram is a hang out that, soon enough, will be well-populated with stores. Many stores. Instagram has already captured their attention and monetized it with ads. Now they’ll monetize it by selling them their favorite t-shirt from Addison Rae. Instagram figures a social experience can double as a different, more meaningful shopping experience.
What's the Big Picture?
The eCommerce experience is mostly transactional. At Amazon or Google, you search for a product and — voila! — you buy it. Nothing more than that. (Maybe you search for a coupon.) In pandemic times, especially, people yearn for social experiences, for experiences rich enough to tell stories about — at home and online.
For decades, shopping was social. When I was a kid, my family made seasonal trips to nearby New York City to houses of retail worship like Bloomingdale’s. We stayed there, too, at my mom’s behest, until I found a pair of jeans that fit.
On the shop-to-be-social front, China leads the way. Again. Check out YCombinator's super-smart case study about Pinduoduo. Here’s an excerpt:
“The take away for startups is that the team purchase model is significant because it enables behaviors associated with offline commerce (e.g., sharing products or ideas with friends, browsing a shopping mall with friends) in an online setting ... There is a huge opportunity for companies to build social into their commerce platforms to take share from transactional platforms and expand e-commerce's overall share of spend.”
A 2013 PWC report found that 56% of all Chinese online consumers are buying products via social media platforms.
Americans’ shift to eCommerce platforms is being accelerated by COVID. It’s the platforms that don’t only offer online shopping, but social online shopping that’ll find success in the long run.
What’s the Lesson for Your Brand?
For years, experts have touted the gold standard of friction-free commerce. And that’s a worthwhile goal, except when it’s not. So, how might you curate a buyer’s journey to let your customers shop alongside their friends?