Your funnel assumed a journey. Shoppers scroll, tap, buy

Discovery and checkout now share a screen

Livestreams, creator storefronts, and in-app checkout compress the old funnel into one session. Someone sees a product, watches a 40-second demo, and buys without leaving the app. Research designs built around staged journeys miss most of this.

What to change in your research

• Fix recall questions: “Where did you first hear about us?” fails when discovery-to-purchase took four minutes. Ask about the session, not the month.
• Go in-the-moment: Mobile diaries and short experience samples catch behavior surveys reconstruct badly.
• Measure creators properly: Follower counts don't equal influence. Test specific creators and communities.
• Localize: Social commerce in Southeast Asia or the Gulf looks nothing like the US or EU version. Don't port questionnaires unedited.

Don't trust platform numbers alone

Platform dashboards grade their own homework. Independent surveys, shop-alongs, and behavioral panels are the only check on what actually drove the sale — and whether it grew your market or just moved it between your own channels.

Next: shopping through AI assistants

Agent-mediated buying is coming — purchases via chatbots and assistants. The open question is trust: when do people let software choose? Whoever researches that first has a head start on the next decade of retail.