What is live social shopping and how does it work?

(NewsNation) — Buying from retail stores or via television broadcasts such as QVC may become less common, but live social shopping is trending in the opposing direction.

Live e-commerce or shopping involves browsing and purchasing goods from a livestream, usually with an influencer giving elaborate descriptions of the products.

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk is among several who expect its influence to only increase.

What is live social shopping?

Live social shopping is what it sounds like.

By nature, it is extremely similar to QVC, but the medium is different.

Instead of appearing on broadcast television, it is delivered live via a stream on a social media platform, such as TikTok, Periscope, or others.

Livestream shopping has been present in Asia for several years and is now becoming more commonplace in the rest of the world.

How does live shopping work?

Viewers watch as a presenter discusses the features of any given product, as has been the case for decades.

One difference from previous iterations is the ability to buy in real-time. But the biggest variance lies in the interactive nature of live social shopping.

Via platforms such as TikTok Live, Amazon Live, Facebook Live Shopping, and others, users can interact with the host and their contemporaries to discuss the product, ask questions, or provide feedback.

Live e-commerce shopping can also transcend borders in a way traditional linear broadcasts could not. Many platforms where live social shopping occurs have a QR code present on the screen for users to be able to purchase the product.

What is the future of live shopping?

Vaynerchuk sees a bright future for live shopping, one in which it becomes a prominent method of purchasing goods.

"If you ask me, right now, how to make money in the next five years in America out of all the options in the world, live shopping would be at the very top of my list," he said in a LinkedIn post last month.

Traditional brick-and-mortar shopping has become a more peripheral means of purchasing products, but Vaynerchuk sees a market for those retailers to reinvent the wheel.

"People are doing more online shopping, rents are getting harder to justify, and more," he added. 

"In five years, I believe you’ll walk down Main Street and half of these store owners or their employees are going to be doing live shopping,"

"They’re going to turn their stores into studios because the opportunity will be real."