Even as Google India launches the re-designed Google My Business App, a free tool for SMBs to start their digital journey through listings on Google, its recently launched immersive shopping search experience for Indian users has got the digital world talking about the tech major’s reasons to include a lifestye portal, and its power over advertisers.
N Chandramouli, CEO of TRA Research, a brand insight company said, “Google is into the business of managing information, and the benefit one gets from it is merely a by-product.”
Shopping is no longer thought of as information-seeking, he added. “It is a destination in itself. Amazon is a strong contender as the first point of buy for many. Google was not managing this piece of information yet. So, this is Google’s opportunity,” said Chandramouli, and added that earlier, “they were the only ones to help a consumer access the net. Now, they are the only way to manage consumers navigation, which has become better after they bought Waze, the Israeli company.”
Siddharth Hegde, Managing Director, Ethinos Digital Marketing, said, “Google Shopping will be an opportunity to significantly update the shopping experience by integrating options like Google Lens and local languages, given that it is available as a tab-like news. This also caters to changing consumer behaviour where many people spend hours browsing through products, new deals, rather than completing a transaction.”
Stating that Google’s first focus will be on making “online shopping easier for the consumer and then focus on monetisation opportunities,” Hedge added, “Consumers will reward Google in making the shopping experience more organised with more traffic pouring in through this route, which Google will then monetise.This could possibly level the playing field for a few smaller but more nimble players to reach more customers.”
Terming it the final frontier of advertising, “the point just before the buying happens”, TRA’s Chandramouli insists Google’s focussed advertising can push a ‘promoted’ product more to the vacillating consumer.
The tool is expected to help with information about competing online retailers. “Today’s consumer only cares about the best deal, not where they get it from. By managing this competitive information about all products available to sell, including pricing, availablity, quality etc, Google is getting new consumer information to manage,” said Chandramouli.
He also said, “Google will give the best analytics to advertisers showing if the customer has bought the product after seeing the advertisement. They will (soon) become the one source which will control all buying information,” and added that precise customer knowledge will help it gain power over the advertiser.
Speaking about the massive scope of shopping tool, Shrenik Gandhi, Chief Executive Officer, White Rivers Media, a digital marketing company, said the launch of Google’s ‘Shopping’ tab “reinforces the reality that the scope of growth for digital market in India is immense. With 1.21 billion Indians, only 460 million of us are online. While the expanding reach of competitive data networks like Jio is going to increase that percentage, there are still only 120 million-odd Indians who habitually shop online.”
The launch of an e-commerce aggregator “that has the search-and-discover might of Google” will help Indians with the most critical part of one’s purchasing behaviour... “that of comparing prices to get the best deal”, Gandhi added.