A Swedish company called “3″ is developing video chat for online merchants. The customer can then have a video chat with an employee to get assistance and interact with products.
The idea of course is to re-create the brick & mortar face to face experience. That’s a good thing for the customer as he never feels he gets the deserved attention. But on the merchant side, this can only rocket cost per sale (the sale itself / the support). And as everyone knows that the major e-commerce players operate around low prices thus ridiculous margins, this fancy device will never happen in a large scale. Maybe for high end brands like deluxe jewelry or fashion were you find fat margins.
