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The rise of live commerce in Asia and adoption of BeLive by retailers

The rise of live streaming e-commerce, often referred to as live commerce, is a new and revolutionary marketing channel and platform based on the initial success of TV Shopping.

By borrowing ideas and formats from this traditional method, retailers are able to create live streamed content where the stream host or Key Opinion Leader (KOL) can interact with the audience, showcase the products and answer questions in real-time.

Furthermore, live commerce connects the shopping cart functionality directly with the live stream, allowing users to purchase items without leaving the stream, as well as, taking advantage of any time-limited content or deals which may be available to them during the stream time.

Retailers are exploring this new channel of marketing as a direct-to-consumer alternative to the current methods used. However, most countries in Asia are still relying on large corporates to provide streaming services, with few startups in the space to bridge the gap.

Live commerce appears to be a natural evolution from video-based marketing or video-first commerce. Most brands embraced video-based marketing by starting out on social media platforms such as TikTok or YouTube, utilising influencers in the space with a strong following similar to the company’s target demographic.

Often on-demand videos of short to medium length were used to promote and sell the products. Users could comment, but live interaction was not possible through this format, and shopping cart integration was not possible yet. However, the on-demand nature of these recorded videos did indicate a higher engagement and conversion rate compared to traditional e-commerce solutions.

Also Read: Why live commerce is here to stay in Asia

This led to the development and growth of live commerce, allowing brands and consumers to interact with each other via live streams directly. This led more retailers to embrace the sales model known as direct-to-consumer, as live commerce opens doors for this direct engagement.

Based on the strong results in this space, leading brands, such as L’Oréal and Nike, have announced that they will be focusing on direct-to-consumer solutions, like live commerce, moving forwards, and the expectation is that other brands will soon follow.

How the live streaming e-commerce space is evolving

Live commerce originated in China, and with the popularity of influencers (or KOLs), as well as the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. China has seen the live stream market grow 57 times between 2017 and 2020 and has not shown signs of slowing down. After gaining rapid traction in China, other countries around the world have slowly started exploring and adopting similar methods to drive online sales.

Asian countries, in particular, have been quick to adopt live commerce solutions, although not at the speed of China, and have found that the solution can improve sale conversion due to the following factors:

These factors are driving retailers of various sizes to explore and experiment with the opportunity of live commerce in various markets and started to evolve how people shop online.

This rise in direct-to-consumer live commerce approaches for retail companies is creating demand for platforms and services related to supporting the businesses behind the live stream. Many retailers face challenges in starting up their own live commerce channel and are seeking third-party suppliers to help bridge the technology and marketing gap generated by a new channel.

How BeLive is helping companies evolve into a new market

BeLive, founded in 2014, has been taking live commerce by storm, creating opportunities for retailers of all sizes to leverage live commerce for their own brands and tap into the direct-to-consumer market.

Unlike some of the more extensive services in the space that are currently available, BeLive has focused on identifying and resolving pain points for each retail customer, providing a tailored experience through custom live streaming platforms for the brand, and supporting the development of the stream contents. By providing end-to-end solutions and empowering retailers to leverage video and live streaming through their own platforms, retailers are able to tap into next-generation consumer behaviours.

Also Read: BeLive lands US$4.5M funding to develop AI, ML capabilities in live-streaming

As retail companies face the upcoming wave of disabling third party cookies in browsers, it becomes more important for first-party data to be able to provide the information needed for retailers to keep identifying their target audience and successfully marketing to them.

Startups such as BeLive can offer these retailers the opportunity to gain end-to-end support for their video-based marketing channels, and bolster their direct-to-consumer channel, meanwhile gathering and reviewing the analytical data through the live streams hosted on a white labelled BeLive platform hosted on the retailers’ own website or app to understand the audience they are engaging deeply.

Beyond just the idea of reaching and understanding their audiences, retailers are also turning to live commerce as a new format for entertainment sales. Real-time engagement with the audience can enable communication and entertaining content based on the products being sold as well as the influencer or KOL featured in the stream.

Based on a recent survey of South Korean users who engage in live commerce, 47.3 per cent of them highlight that they are there to support the KOL or influencer featured, while McKinsey found that a quarter of adults are more likely to purchase items recommended by them by these influencers or KOLs.

BeLive taps into their partner network solutions, an offering beyond just the platform, to support retailers in finding the right influencers, graphic designers and production houses to enable a successful live streamed show.

This support proves vital to retailers of all sizes, allowing their solutions to be streamlined into one location rather than a fragmented approach which currently exists within the market.

How BeLive is expanding into new markets

With BeLive being one of the first advocates for live commerce, their vision was to build a platform to connect streamers and their fans. After having their solution white labelled by Rakuten in 2019, they catered to an uptick of brands looking for their own live commerce solutions who were steadily moving away from the offerings on social media.

Kenneth Tan from BeLive said, “I’m pretty happy to say that right now we power 100 million viewers every single month indirectly through our solutions. So that’s a huge influence that we have, and I think this influence comes with a lot of responsibility as well.”

This demand for the live commerce sector has seen an increase in the need for solutions like BeLive’s to connect together three key verticals in the market in order to create the ideal environment for live commerce to flourish.

This includes content creator companies or advertising agencies, e-commerce enablers and systems integrators and finally, cloud infrastructure players. With these key players, BeLive is able to support the end-to-end services of their retail customers.

Also Read: The era of live commerce has finally arrived. Will retailers embrace it?

One area that BeLive has specialised in is building this network across Asia, allowing them to enable cross-border live commerce, connecting retailers to an audience beyond their country borders. Their current focus is to expand this further through their efforts in the Rainmaking Expand: South Korea program, collaborating with players in the key verticals as they explore connecting retailers with the rest of their Asian network.

How startups can support companies to keep up with the latest trends

Even as China makes record e-commerce sales every year through live streaming, there is still a significant gap in specific markets within Asia when it comes to approaching live commerce.

For example, in South Korea, we still see a strong dependence on more prominent players in the space, meaning that retailers have to utilise the tools, platforms and payment systems implemented by these companies, with a lack of deep data on the audiences, or control in the customer flow.

Although there is an increase in digital agencies that are helping retailers bridge the knowledge gap on how to manage live commerce, there is a low number of options available to enable retailers to run their own streams on their own platform or website.

This area within the e-commerce sector shows early signs that it is ripe for disruption by startups. As solutions in all stages of the live commerce funnel become developed by a variety of startups, similar to BeLive, we are expecting a shift and rapid growth within the market over the next few years, enabling the adoption of live commerce to grow.

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