We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Argos has launched a "voice shopping" service to let people reserve products in their local store by talking to one of Google's smart speakers -the first UK retailer to do so. While customers would be able to reserve products using the Google Home, Home Mini, or Home Max speakers (or via Google Assistant on their smartphones) the transaction will still need to be confirmed on your smartphone. The command "Hey Google, ask Argos" will let you reserve and buy 20,000 different products including toys and home essentials. Argos isn't getting idealistic about how many sales this might encourage, with chief executive John Rogers telling the BBC that he "doesn't expect to turn on the app and suddenly double our sales", but thinks that customers will enjoy the novelty of shopping via their voice. However, whether or not people want to use a voice assistant to shop is a different matter. A report last month from The Information found that only 16% of smart speaker owners use their device for shopping, while only 2% of people with Amazon Alexa enabled devices are making voice activated purchases in 2018. With Amazon having its voice assistant tied more heavily into its online storefront than Google Assistant (it being one of the main pillars of its business) this doesn't bode well. It could be that customers simply do not trust buying a product that they can't see, and perhaps the addition of a screen (like on the Echo Show or the Lenovo Smart Display) will help that. But for now, you can shirk your catalogue for the allure of the smart speaker.

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