In today’s society everyone wants things faster, now and for less. More and more people are looking for ways to say time and money as our pace as a society is not slowing down anytime soon. The future of social media and where we are going is huge and the idea of online grocery shopping is just the beginning. Online shopping has been popular for years, being able to buy clothes, diapers, shoes, household items with the click of a button and have it show up at your door step is extremely popular because of its convenience and time saving appeal. Moving into groceries is a whole new ball game because you’re buying meat, fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products that can’t be shipped in the mail. This is where ‘Click and Collect’ has come in. ‘Click and Collect’ is an online website that you can visit, view all the groceries in the store and add them to your cart. You then pick a time slot you would like to pick up at and arrive to the store. There are designated parking spots that you call a number when you arrive and for the small cost of $3-$5 someone will do your shopping and delivery to your vehicle. Jennifer Quesnel, Click Collect Manager commented that ‘ Convenience is that we have it all ready for you so you can spend your time doing whats important to you instead of coming in to shop”.

Every day, new strategies are being developed to increase social media’s role in helping business performance levels. Whether social media is utilized to better employee engagement within a company, or as a tool to market products to consumers, its facets are continually updated to provide seamless integration in business structure to improve its functioning. However, if we look ahead to the future of social media and business performance, it appears that it may not be people at all who monitor and produce the different levels of communication across various social media platforms. Who would be responsible for these specific roles then? The answer lies in one simple acronym: AI. If you don’t already know, AI stands for artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence may be defined as a type of computer or machine that possesses the capability of mimicking intelligent human behaviour (hence the word artificial). In fact, we have already had such a glimpse into the future from various businesses who have already started to implement AI across their social media channels to better their own customer engagement/service practices. One such company includes ecommerce super giant eBay, who has developed their own “ShopBot,” which uses AI technology in combination with the Facebook messenger app to assist customers in finding the items they are searching for within their price range.