Amazon India enlists social media influencers for live video shopping experience

Amazon is rolling out a livestreaming video shopping feature in India.

The company is hooking up with social media influencers to host livestreams during which they can interact with customers and also offer limited period deals.

"With the Amazon Live launch, we want to make the shopping experience exciting and meaningful for our customers," says Kishore Thota, Director, Customer Experience and Marketing, Amazon India.

Amazon Live is currently hosting livestreams across several categories, including electronics, fashion and beauty, and home decor via an app.

Amazon says it will run 15 livestreams a day between 10 am to 1 am. During its ongoing festive sale, it expects to stream over 450 hours of content.

Meanwhile, in the UK…

Amazon Fresh has launched a Price Cut promotion in the UK.

Its 19 Just Walk Out technology powered stores have dropped the prices of over 200 products.

Amazon says that this is to “help customers save on their home essentials whilst the cost of living crisis puts further pressure on household costs”.

The promotion offers reductions of up to 20% on everyday essentials.

Walking away

In August, Amazon put the brakes on the expansion of its UK checkout-free convenience stores, due to sales falling short of expectations and fit out costs being multiple times higher than with a standard location.

According to a report by The Sunday Times, the US giant is understood to have walked away from talks on dozens of sites for Amazon Fresh stores, and has stopped its search for more locations.

There will still be a handful of openings this year at sites where Amazon had already committed to a lease.

In a LinkedIn post, Martin Heubel, an Amazon strategy consultant, said: “Not a major surprise amid the current economic climate. It’s expensive to get into retail and even more expensive to remain.”

“With inflation at all time highs, customers are prioritising to save money. Even the most advanced self-checkout technology won’t revert this trend in the short-term. It seems, Amazon has come to realise this, too.”

Amazon’s first checkout-free store in the UK opened in March last year, in Ealing, west London. Since then, it has opened another 18 stores, predominantly in the capital.

A spokesperson told RTIH: “I can confirm that we will continue to open Amazon Fresh stores and look forward to opening more in the future.”