Okay Google, simplify my life

The next evolution of list-making is here and it’s all about audio. The days of a handful of items scrawled on a piece of paper held to the front of the refrigerator with a cute magnet are coming to an end. Many households have migrated to retailer apps with list-making features, but the next evolution of list-making, like so much of retail, involves voice.

Grocery retailers of any size can easily integrate with popular home assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home, voice capabilities that allow shoppers to engage with them through activities like creating a new grocery list, adding products, amending their list and ordering their groceries for pickup or delivery by voice. The new voice functionality is courtesy of digital solutions provider Unata and was unveiled in late September at the Shop.org e-commerce show in Los Angeles.

"Voice tech is completely transforming the way consumers interact with retailers and purchase products," said Diego Maniloff, VP of Engineering at Unata. "By providing grocers the option to integrate with voice technology, we're helping them enhance their customer offering, become the go-to retailer the moment a consumer feels inspired to purchase and compete with industry behemoths."

And by behemoths, Maniloff is off course referring to Amazon and to a lesser extent the likes of Walmart and Kroger. Both retailers have made tremendous strides when it comes to integrating their physical and digital offerings, most notably with buy online, pick up at store capabilities available at 1,000 locations respectively.

Voice technology isn’t new, but it’s attainability for small to medium sized grocery retailers is, according to Unata. The company contends it is paving the way for small to medium sized grocery retailers to compete with the Amazons of the world by providing the type of cutting-edge voice technology integration that shopper are rapidly adopting.

Unata CEO Chris Bryson spoke to many of the ways retail and the grocery shoppers’ path to purchase are changing in the future in an eerily prescient article that appeared in Retail Leader earlier this year.