How do you decide where to invest, when your sales channel options explode?

How consumers inspire themselves and buy stuff is shifting:

1.     From inspiration to transaction

2.     From ‘allowing deliberately hired influencers in their space’ to more ‘free, unknown creators’

3.     From being in the driving seat themselves to more AI-assisted commerce

This change is already visible. 93% Of daily TikTok users says they would use the platform to research products before buying. A third of UK online shoppers and one in seven in Germany have already purchased through TikTok Shop. Even unexpected viral trends, like IKEA's pot lid organizer becoming a vinyl record stand, show how creators and consumers generate demand in entirely new ways.

TikTok Shop is the clearest example of what this shift looks like in practice. It fuses three shopping formats into one channel: shoppable video that turns a scroll into a cart, live shopping events where creators sell in real time, and even an old-fashioned product catalogue for the moments people come looking for your brand with intent.

·        From inspiration to transaction

TikTok Shop bringing inspiration, recommendation and transaction into the same environment, offering a frictionless buying experience.

Where does inspiration genuinely turn into action in your category? And how nearby do you have to convert inspiration into transaction in the customer journey? Or how nearby can you make it?

·        From brand ambassador-led to free agent creator-led commerce

Traditional influencer marketing primarily helped brands capture existing usage and demand. Creator-led commerce can increasingly create demand in different ways.

For brands, this goes beyond the traditional way of finding the right influencers to promote your product. It is about understanding what gets people talking, sharing and ultimately buying, and start a whisper about this on multiple social locations (not only digital social media, now the school playground, festivals, hobby communities are perfect engines as well).

·        From consumer-led to AI-assisted commerce

AI is already changing how we shop, allowing consumers to discover, compare and choose within one platform, all under the guidance of AI as their personal shopper.

For brands, this means being found and shortlistedby algorithms as well as people, while understanding how far shoppers will trust theserecommendations. Do they follow them directly, or will they seek further inspirationr reassurance in other channels?

So, what happens to today's channels?

New channels won't necessarily replace existing ones but change the role they play. As TikTok and AI tools provide an all-in-one solution for discovery, guidance and transaction, the more traditional channels will need to find their evolving role.

The challenge therefore is not to be everywhere, but to understand which channels matter most to your customer-product architecture and what job each should do, and which emerging shopper behaviors are worth acting on.

And just as a new shopper journey is coming together, so should your shopper research.

As the shopper is continuously influenced by new channels, awareness of them, and suitability in their lives Haystack Consulting can help understand its impact, as we have:

• In-house multichannel expertise (retailers, e-retailers, Social media marketplaces cfr. Instagram Shopping, TikTok Shop etc.)
• Retailer and Brand-led expertise, as our Shopper division works for several different channels and brands
• An AI-enriched Shopper Research toolkit in place to answer all your questions faster (cfr. Virtual Audience© Shopping) and enriched by human imagination and shopper strategy

This way Haystack prepares you for the future of commerce faster.

Concretely, exploring it with those already closer to it, rather than predicting it conceptually. We talk to (virtual) leading-edge audiences who are early adopters around the globe to uncover emerging behaviors, co-create what they could mean for your category and brand and validate the strongest ideas quantitatively in the shopping environment at hand to understand their potential to scale. Because the goal isn't to chase every new channel. It is to spot meaningful behavioral changes in different channels early enough to turn them into brand advantage.

Did I inspire you into a transaction? 😉 Let’s get in touch!