Play to buy: the gamification of shopping
The killer app is not efficiency, but community
Welcome to the Sociology of Business. This is the first issue Sociology of Business with a paid membership program. Paid options are for the members of this community who want to be the first to access everything from Web3 brand-building to the new business models and emerging creative formats. Since its inception, the Sociology of Business has been the source code for many other analyses, strategies and brand-building approaches. Members will now have the front-row seat. If you are not yet subscribed, join the community by subscribing below and joining the Sociology of Business Discord. You can find my book, The Business of Aspiration on Amazon and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter. For those new here, in my last analysis, The New New Menswear, I looked into what are the viable focus areas that power menswear’s growth today - and that represent competitive strategy of menswear brands.
Fast Checkout closed on April 15th 2022. It was a part of the busy one-click checkout market that bets on convenience, efficiency and speed as e-commerce’s killer features.
Maybe not.
Imagine the vibe of going to a mall in its heyday; the experience was rich with serendipity, product discovery, socializing and entertainment. Shopping looked more like a leisure activity than a transactional exchange that’s been optimized to death.
To this day, aspects of shopping that many consumers enjoy the most are the opportunity to showcase their taste, pass their time, share their purchases, influence others and be influenced by them. Community, and the social rewards that come with it, is the most reliable incentive to shop.
Community is also the biggest network effect. Durable vectors of success have more to do with whether a retailer can connect their customers through the shared things they like than if it has the fastest checkout. Those who do will take share from transactional commerce platforms.
Analysis continues after the jump.
When I met Atlanta De Cadenet Taylor a few months back, my first thought was that the world needs more people like her. Passionate, informed, smart, compassionate, and very very present. Atlanta is the CEO and founder of Lushious, a femmewear brand. Femmewear is an apparel category for the feminine expression across genders. Lushious is also revolutionizing sizing names. It is long overdue as it’s unclear why humans would ever want to be labeled as “small” or “large.” That’s for geometry. In addition to creating a new category and much more appealing sizing, Lushious also simultaneously sells digital and physical objects (product selection for the launch includes 3 NFTs and two products). Possibilities for digital and physical integration are endless, and we’re seeing the future of retail unfolding in front of our eyes.
There are currently two scenarios: group buying and a shared shopping cart. Both are under the umbrella of interactive commerce, and both rely on three pillars: curation, community, and entertainment.