It’s that time again when those who need to give gifts have to visit stores or spend hours browsing shopping sites. E-commerce to find the right gift. Some enjoy the process. Many don’t. And more and more people are willing to delegate a large part of this task to artificial intelligence (AI).
Chatbots work as Personal shopper for each. They can listen to what a user is looking for, compile a short list of options, and help compare products. According to a survey by e-commerce tools provider Shopify, about two-thirds of consumers in wealthy countries (and five-sixths of 18- to 24-year-olds) plan to use AI to help them shop this season.
In parallel, a McKinsey study found that generative AI is used second most frequently in the United States to ask for buying advice, just behind general information searches and ahead of typing assistance. More and more often, consumers can even make purchases directly via a chatbot. McKinsey estimates that by 2030, $3 trillion to $5 trillion in purchases will be made worldwide through these “agents.” Retail is facing the next big disruption.
AI companies are betting that their technology will transform purchasing in the same way E-commerce He did it in the Internet age. Although OpenAI lowered the priority of integrating advertising into ChatGPT, it entered into agreements with Etsy – the Marketplace of crafts – and with Shopify, which allows businesses to sell through their chatbot for a commission. And Google, whose search engine has been a point of contact for many buyers for years, is also targeting the so-called “agent commerce” market. In the United States, its AI tools can call stores to check inventory, track the price of products and make some purchases on the user’s behalf when an offer appears.
But that Retailer They don’t sit idly by. Many websites from E-commerce They rejected the idea that an AI agent could stand between them and their customers. Amazon, the largest trading center on-line in the world – which generates around a tenth of its revenue from advertising – is trying to prevent buyers from defecting from its platform. He blocked that Crawlers by OpenAI to stop them from collecting product information and sued Perplexity, another AI company, claiming that its Comet agent is wandering around the site posing as a human (Perplexity denies this).
Others are more open. In October, Walmart – Amazon’s historic competitor – announced that its products can be purchased directly through ChatGPT. These agreements can help Retailer to reach consumers they otherwise wouldn’t reach. Analysts at Bank Mizuho estimate that 4% of visits to Walmart’s website come from external recommendations, a third of which come from ChatGPT.
Outgoing Walmart CEO Doug McMillon acknowledges these purchases on-line You need to go beyond “a search bar” and “a long list.” Some chains, including Walmart, have developed their own shopping assistants. Research from Accenture shows that Americans prefer these first-party bots over third-party agents like ChatGPT.
This also reflects the challenge of integrating third-party AI tools into chains’ internal data. In a recent call with investors, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy criticized outside buyers: “There is no customization. There is no purchase history. Delivery estimates are often wrong. Prices are often wrong.” (Amazon has its own assistant, Rufus, which the company says has been used by 250 million customers this year.)
Julie Bornstein, founder of Daydream – an AI-based fashion shopping tool – argues this The Chatbots They work better with certain types of products. They are ideal if the items have clear and comparable specifications (e.g. vacuum cleaners where the Retailer Detail weight and performance). They tolerate categories that combine specifications with personal preferences, such as cosmetics, relatively well. But in deeply personal areas – like fashion – they usually fail. “Taste-related categories are completely different,” says Bornstein. “It’s not about the technical data. It’s about the feel and look of the product.”
How enthusiastic consumer acceptance is also depends on the product manufacturers Chatbots They rely on advertising to make money. Walmart is already experimenting with ads in its Sparky assistant, and Google recently told advertisers it will integrate advertising into its Gemini chatbot next year. This could affect the perception of the objectivity of these tools and discourage some users.
Meanwhile, brands are looking for new ways to persuade consumers Chatbots Recommend your products. The old SEO (search engine optimization) is gradually becoming “generative search engine optimization”. Lily AI, a company of softwarecollected data about the language users use in chatbots and integrates this information into its customers’ websites. For example, a company might list an item of clothing in the “sports” section as a “midnight blue French terry sweatshirt,” while users simply ask the chatbot about “blue hoodies,” explains Purva Gupta, founder of Lily AI.
Mandeep Bhatia of Tapestry, which owns Coach and Kate Spade, adds that brands must appear in the material that AI agents crawl. Muck Rack, a brand of software Public Relations analyzed more than a million cited links Chatbots popular in July and found that company pages or press releases appeared only 18% of the time, compared to 25% for news pages, the most commonly cited source. Chatbots also tend to prefer fresh content. Fashion blogs and trade magazines are becoming increasingly important for Tapestry, says Bhatia.
An unexpected consequence of all this is that while AI reorganizes purchases on-linephysical stores could become more important again. Than that Browse moves outside of the actual locations of Retailer and brands, stores with prominent storefronts, and charismatic salespeople offer another opportunity to influence consumer perceptions. Three-quarters of Shopify study participants say they value human interaction when shopping, up from just over half in 2024. Many shoppers still want to touch and try on certain products, such as clothing. And this time of year, a stroll around the mall is still a way to get in the festive spirit.
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