ChatGPT sees 84M shopping questions weekly, surpassing Amazon search volume

ChatGPT's weekly shopping query volume has climbed to 8% of Amazon's search volume. It was less than 1%, 9 months ago. This has been a 250% increase month over month. The AI rate of change in retail is insane. How are you keeping up? #ecommerce #AI #agenticshopping

🚀 The future of retail is becoming truly conversational. Walmart’s new integration with ChatGPT moves e-commerce from a search-and-browse model to what they’re calling “agentic commerce”—where AI actively helps shoppers discover, compare, and purchase in a single conversation. Instead of typing keywords, users can simply describe what they’re looking for (“gift for an avid reader” / “healthy weeknight dinner ingredients”) and the AI handles product curation and checkout. 🎯 Why it matters (especially for market researchers & consumer intelligence): -It changes how consumers interact with brands: from browsing categories to having a conversational assistant. -Data collection becomes more nuanced — the AI learns preferences, context, and intent in real time. -It raises questions around UX design, privacy, and how brands position themselves in this new journey. -For agencies and research teams: we’ll need to adapt how we measure “engagement” and “conversion” in a chat‐driven world. 🧠 My take: In my view, this is a strong signal that intent is evolving into interaction. The future may not be “go find the product” so much as “tell me what you want and let me find it for you”. As someone working in audience intelligence and market research, this opens rich terrain: what triggers a chat purchase? How does trust build in a conversational interface versus a traditional site? What brand messaging needs to shift? 💡 A call to action: -If you’re working on consumer journeys, e-commerce strategy or audience insights: now’s a good time to ask: -Are we optimizing for chat-based discovery vs. search-based discovery? -How are our brand’s touchpoints appearing in these new agentic interactions? -What new data streams will emerge from these chat-driven purchases (and how can we responsibly harness them)? https://lnkd.in/e5entZth #AI #RetailInnovation #Ecommerce #ConsumerInsights #AudienceIntelligence #CustomerExperience #DigitalCommerce #ConversationalAI #MarketResearch

"Over the past year, Stackline has started tracking 'shopping question volume' – any question with retail purchase intent – across the largest AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Amazon’s Rufus, and more). In the U.S., shoppers are now asking ChatGPT over 84 million shopping-related questions on a weekly basis. And the volume shows a marked acceleration since the beginning of summer." For context, compared to Amazon searches, ChatGPT went from <1% to 8% in less than a year. Quite the tectonic shift. I've spoken to many brands already about how we can equip them to meet consumers in this new path to purchase. Feel free to get in touch if you want to learn more. https://lnkd.in/gSQfCPrq

A deep dive and strategic analysis on Walmart and ChatGPT partnership. OpenAI is vehemently pushing core user behavior changes to conversational AI. This and other partnerships with DoorDash and Uber Eats signal that conversation is the beginning of buying. Walmart should gain incremental business with this strategy. As I point in the essay, the core customers gained through ChapGPT are probably the ones that would have gone to Amazon or other marketplaces other than Walmart. OpenAI Walmart #conversationalAI #AI #ChatGPT

🛒 The future of shopping just arrived—and it's happening inside a chat window. OpenAI just partnered with Walmart to let you buy products directly through ChatGPT. Think about that for a second: No more switching between apps to research and buy. No more abandoned carts because the checkout process was too complicated. No more "I'll buy it later" that turns into never. This isn't just a cool tech feature. It's a complete reimagining of how commerce works. Here's why this matters for every business: ✅ Conversational commerce is the new frontier. When AI can understand context, recommend products, and complete transactions—all in one conversation—friction disappears. ✅ The customer journey is collapsing. We're moving from "awareness → consideration → purchase" to "conversation → purchase." The entire sales funnel just got compressed into a chat. ✅ Competition is shifting. It's no longer about having the best website or the fastest checkout. It's about being where your customers are already talking. OpenAI is positioning itself to compete directly with Amazon and Google for digital shopping revenue. And they're doing it by making the buying experience feel like... well, not buying at all. Just having a conversation. The companies that adapt to conversational commerce first will have a massive advantage. The ones that don't? They'll be wondering why their customers are shopping somewhere else. How do you think conversational AI will change the way your industry does business?

💡 “𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 — 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮.” OpenAI is trialling a Buy It button inside ChatGPT — meaning customers will soon be able to complete a purchase while chatting. 🛍️ This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a glimpse of the future: conversation becomes transaction. ⚙️ For SME owners — that means shorter sales cycles and tighter working capital windows. 📊 For accountants — it means helping clients rethink their cash-flow rhythms, payment systems, and how fast they can actually deliver. As The Conversation article points out, this change will rewrite how commerce happens — from search → click → checkout, to chat → buy → done. And that’s going to test every SME’s cash-flow strategy. 💬 Think about it: 1️⃣ If your customers could buy inside a chat, how would that change your cash-flow cycle? 2️⃣ When sales move to AI-driven conversations, what happens to debtor days and reconciliation? 3️⃣ Are we ready for a world where the cash gap shrinks — but expectations explode? 📰 After OpenAI’s new “Buy It in ChatGPT” trial: How soon will AI be online shopping for us? The future of business finance isn’t just faster — it’s conversational. And smart operators are already planning for the cash-flow impact. #SMEFinance #CashFlow #WorkingCapital #AI #ChatGPT #Accountants #MartinCattach #FinanceForBusiness #ILOVEWHATIDO

Would you trust ChatGPT to shop on your behalf? Maybe, maybe not. But companies like OpenAI, Google, Visa, and Mastercard are developing ways to make it easier for consumers to use AI to make purchasing decisions. It could save you time and hassle -- you could ask AI to track a product's price until it drops within your budget, and then automatically set to "buy." But it might also encourage overspending. It's not clear right now that AI would be able to judge a product on things that matter to you (ethics or sustainability). New forms of fraud are a risk. And it could have major consequences for businesses. Instead of just having websites built for customers and search engines, businesses will need to build AI accessible online stores: data-soaked digital catalogues, filled with everything an AI agent needs to place orders. If a business’s data isn’t formatted for AI, it may disappear from view. That could give larger players an edge and once again make it harder for smaller businesses to compete. UTS PhD researcher Vibhu Arya has written a new piece exploring how our individual and collective choices over the next few years might shape radical changes in how we shop. #phd #research #innovation #ecommerce #AI #GenAI #digitalpayments P.S. If this is the kind of work that Future You wants to do, consider reaching out to Prof Renu Agarwal MAICD, Wen Helena Li, or UTS Business School

Just a few days back on October 10, Walmart announced a groundbreaking partnership with OpenAI to revolutionize the shopping experience by integrating ChatGPT-powered **Instant Checkout** directly into their platform. This bold move ushers in a new era of **hyper-personalization** and **seamless customer experience** in online retail. This marks the second major milestone in Walmart’s AI strategy, following the launch of **Sparky** in June 2025. Sparky is an AI-powered shopping assistant embedded within the Walmart app that helps customers find products, compare options, synthesize reviews, and delivers highly personalized recommendations using natural language. It goes beyond traditional search by understanding context such as occasions, weather, and past purchases, making shopping more intuitive and tailored. Sparky is part of Walmart’s vision to evolve into **agentic AI-driven commerce**—not just informing customers but proactively acting on their behalf in future updates, such as reordering and service bookings. As Walmart CEO Doug McMillon put it: „For many years now, eCommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change. There is a native AI experience coming that is multi-media, personalized, and contextual." Thanks to this partnership, customers will soon be able to shop nearly Walmart’s entire catalog—from groceries to clothing to entertainment—using natural, conversational AI either via ChatGPT or directly within Walmart’s app. The market responded enthusiastically, with Walmart’s share price surging nearly 5% to a 52-week high following the announcement, signaling strong investor confidence in AI as a critical driver of retail growth. This collaboration highlights how Walmart is at the forefront of transforming retail through AI-powered hyper-personalization and delivering unmatched customer experiences. Screenshot taken from here where you‘ll also get more information: https://lnkd.in/e_3HtrqE

61% of e-com business owners worry their competitors are moving faster on AI. They're right to worry. AI tools like ChatGPT surface products "conversationally" now. That means the AI reads your product page and decides if it's trustworthy enough to recommend. Slow site speed, missing reviews, or vague descriptions all signal low quality. The AI won't risk frustrating a user by recommending something that looks unreliable. Your competitor with better site fundamentals gets the sale. Is your site built to earn AI's trust, or just to look good? https://lnkd.in/dzkePXrr #Ecommerce #GEO #ProductDiscovery

ChatGPT isn’t just answering questions anymore. With Instant Checkout via Etsy and Shopify, discovery, research, and purchase can all happen inside AI. What fuels those AI-driven outputs? In large part: ratings, reviews, and UGC. The same content that earns trust on a PDP is now deciding what shows up in AI-driven search—and with these new partnerships, it can drive not just discovery, but purchases directly. Read it here. 👇