TikTok-style shopping: Introducing Inspire, Amazon’s brand new social feed

Amazon has been dabbling in social commerce for a while now. Its Posts feature allows customers to browse their favourite brands Instagram-style, while Amazon Live has proved a brilliant challenger to YouTube, livestreaming and shopping TV models.

Now it has brought the TikTok model into the marketplace as well, with new product Amazon Inspire.

What is Amazon Inspire?

Inspire is an in-app shopping feed, made up of shoppable photos and short-form videos.

When shoppers sign up, they select your interests from a list – hiking, skincare, gaming, babies and toddlers, mixology – and their feed is then populated with content relating to those interests.

The idea is you can scroll through posts from brands, influencers and other customers to inspire you.

All images and videos are shoppable, so it’s an easy step from browsing to buying.

[Photo credit: Amazon]

Why has Amazon created Inspire?

While high street retail has recovered somewhat since the pandemic, online shopping is here to stay.

But there are distinct differences between high street retail and eCommerce. The one trades on impulse buys, in-store marketing and an open shopper mindset; the other is traditionally for buying things you already know you want.

Social media plays a big part in blurring these lines, and tempting customers to shop more impulsively online. Where do you see the most effective ads for gift ideas, homeware or fashion? Where do influencers have the biggest reach? On the likes of Instagram and TikTok.

By aping these social media platforms, Amazon hopes to create a better shopping experience for customers, and therefore tempt more spend.

This seems to be the way eCommerce is going: influential, engaging, content-driven shopping that inspires customers, and as usual, Amazon is leading the pack.

With Inspire’s dynamic content and easy shopping model, it can engage more customers with their favourite kinds of products and brands.

What do the e-Comas team like about it?

We like that it offers customer-to-customer interaction, which will potentially revolutionise the product reviews model.

Customers can already add photos and videos to their reviews on Amazon, of course, but we believe Inspire could incentivise them to take a media-first approach to reviews.

Also, by featuring them in feeds, Amazon Inspire could give reviews a new prominence. We know how important reviews are to customers: we know how heavily shoppers rely on them in making a decision. But they’ve always been below the fold, so to see them featured actually as inspiration for shoppers will be really interesting.

How will it work for brands?

For now, Inspire is populating feeds using brand content from Amazon Posts. So if you’re in the US, start using Posts now – it’s free, and we’ve seen great results with our clients.

It’s also using influencer content from the Amazon Influencer Program.

In future, we expect brands will be able to post their own short-form videos.

Ok, where can I get it, and when?

For now, it’s in the US only: from December 2022, it’s available to select customers, and will be rolled out US-wide in the next few months. Depending on its success there, it will be available in other marketplaces.

Like Amazon Posts and Amazon Live, it’s currently free for brands to use.

Our Senior Account Manager and Team Lead Sarra Matallah says: “It is a smart move from Amazon to merge social and shopping in one place. Social commerce is what Amazon has been somewhat missing, and the newly launched Amazon Inspire will fill that gap and make the shopping experience more visual and dynamic.”

If you’re selling in the US, contact us today to see how you can take advantage of Amazon Live, Amazon Posts and Amazon Inspire!