Why Retailers Will Drive Conversational Commerce Adoption
Our Conversational Commerce series is designed to provide brand leaders with deeper insight into how AI is reshaping commerce. This week, we focus on the underlying drivers of conversational commerce – and why we expect retailers to rethink the scorecards they use to measure performance.
Retailers recognize that shopper behavior has changed materially over the past 6-9 months, even if their commerce experiences have not yet caught up. Holiday 2025 shopping data provided concrete evidence of a structural shift:
- Adobe reported that 39% of U.S. consumers used generative AI for shopping-related activities during the period leading into and through the holidays.
- Forbes calculated this as a 1300% increase in the role of AI in shopping behavior over the holiday period, albeit from a small base.
- Digital Commerce 360 reported that AI-driven traffic converted 31% higher than non-AI traffic during Holiday 2025.
- Business Wire reported that the top use cases included product research (53%), product recommendations (40%), and deal-finding (36%).
For many retailers, AI represents one of the most exciting growth and shopper-delight opportunities in recent history, based on early industry learnings:
- Conversion rates grow up to 4X: AI thought-leader Neuwark reports that while traditional eCommerce conversion rates remain stuck around 2%, shoppers who engage with AI convert at more than 12%.
- Carts can be recovered: Neuwark has uncovered that conversational experiences are recovering up to 35% of abandoned carts, compared to 5-15% through traditional email recovery.
- Sales thrive: Envive.AI has reported that AI chat can deliver 7-25% sales lift.
- Speed skyrockets: The Anchor Group has found that AI-assisted journeys drive up to 47% faster purchases.
When decisions are guided by context and framed in consumer language in real time, retailers know that customers buy more and buy faster. Enabling shoppers to leverage AI in the early and middle stages of discovery and reducing purchase friction is now paramount. As a result, retailers are testing various hypotheses and shifting their strategies to win the long game. Most see the greatest need for change in the early and middle stages of discovery, particularly for exploratory questions that are difficult to translate into keywords.
Rather than replacing search, conversational interfaces are becoming a parallel retail layer, where intent is clarified and shaped before a purchase is ever made. Retailers are responding to this shift in distinct ways. Since late 2025, a series of announcements has revealed not just adoption, but a pattern of strategic bets that signals where commerce is going next:
Retail Bet #1: The Elimination of Friction Between Intent and Action
Walmart’s partnership with OpenAI introduced the idea that a conversation could move search seamlessly from discovery to transaction, allowing customers to purchase products directly within ChatGPT. Similarly, Target announced a ChatGPT shopping beta with basket-building, multi-item checkout, and fulfillment options. Both announcements marked a fundamental departure from the browse-and-buy “journey” model that has defined eCommerce for decades. More broadly, industry data shows that customer journeys are compressed into a single conversational flow in which discovery, evaluation, and purchase occur within one continuous exchange.
Retail Bet #2: Betting on Parallel Agentic Decision Recommendations
Retailers have long embraced AI. Amazon, for example, has used AI for nearly two decades to shape search results and deliver recommendations designed to drive clicks and conversions. Now, we see another major shift as retailers embrace strategies and parallel systems that serve both human shoppers and AI agents that can interpret, filter, and recommend on the customer’s behalf.
Walmart’s expansion across multiple AI ecosystems, including integrations with both ChatGPT and Google Gemini, reflects a strategy to ensure its products are surfaced and selected within these agent-driven environments. At the same time, emerging infrastructure such as Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol is being built specifically to allow AI agents to navigate across retailers, manage transactions, and coordinate the shopping experience end-to-end. eBay built an AI shopping agent for personalized discovery. Lowe’s “Mylow” AI assistant already handles ~1M+ queries/month for tasks like DIY help, product search, and order status, while Sephora has invested in AI personalization and conversational consultation.
Retail Bet #3: The Redefinition of Conversion
While conversational commerce dramatically improves engagement and mid-funnel performance, early retailer experiments reveal a more nuanced reality. Walmart’s initial tests of in-chat checkout showed lower conversion rates compared to directing customers back to its own website. This has led to a rapid evolution in strategy, with retailers embedding their own experiences within conversational platforms rather than fully outsourcing the transaction. This suggests that conversational commerce is not simply replacing existing channels – its greater value lies in influencing decisions upstream, where intent is formed, and confidence is built. By the time a customer reaches checkout, the outcome has often already been determined within the conversation.
Retail Bet #4: Democratization of AI-Driven Commerce Capabilities
What was once limited to large enterprise retailers is now being distributed across the entire ecosystem. Retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart are placing big bets on Agentic Commerce. But unlike the rise of eCommerce, conversational commerce is democratizing quickly across independent and smaller retailers. Platforms such as Shopify, Wix, and Square are embedding conversational tools directly into their offerings, enabling even small merchants to participate in AI-driven shopping experiences. For instance, Shopify introduced the “Agentic Commerce” platform and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). With this, Shopify merchants can sell directly within AI channels (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Copilot), embed checkout inside conversations, and offer “agentic storefronts” connecting merchants to AI agents. This gives every Shopify merchant access to conversational retail capabilities with similar performance potential.
Brand leaders must recognize that another structural shift is underway and prepare their strategies, plans, and organizations to respond accordingly. Retailers are proactively building parallel experiences that shift shoppers to a more dynamic, compressed, and lower-friction exchange. For now, conversational commerce will not replace traditional eCommerce, but it will change all aspects of go-to-market readiness – from what it takes to show up as a Category Captain or ASP Walmart vendor to how SKU priorities evolve across yet another channel.
Want to win in AI Commerce? Simpactful can help! Our team of Retail and eCommerce experts can assess your preparedness and help put the right plans in place to ensure you are ready for what’s ahead. Contact us today at contact@simpactful.com or 925-234-6394. Visit www.simpactful.com.
Retailers recognize that shopper behavior has changed materially over the past 6-9 months, even if their commerce experiences have not yet caught up. Holiday 2025 shopping data provided concrete evidence of a structural shift:
- Adobe reported that 39% of U.S. consumers used generative AI for shopping-related activities during the period leading into and through the holidays.
- Forbes calculated this as a 1300% increase in the role of AI in shopping behavior over the holiday period, albeit from a small base.
- Digital Commerce 360 reported that AI-driven traffic converted 31% higher than non-AI traffic during Holiday 2025.
- Business Wire reported that the top use cases included product research (53%), product recommendations (40%), and deal-finding (36%).
For many retailers, AI represents one of the most exciting growth and shopper-delight opportunities in recent history, based on early industry learnings:
- Conversion rates grow up to 4X: AI thought-leader Neuwark reports that while traditional eCommerce conversion rates remain stuck around 2%, shoppers who engage with AI convert at more than 12%.
- Carts can be recovered: Neuwark has uncovered that conversational experiences are recovering up to 35% of abandoned carts, compared to 5-15% through traditional email recovery.
- Sales thrive: Envive.AI has reported that AI chat can deliver 7-25% sales lift.
- Speed skyrockets: The Anchor Group has found that AI-assisted journeys drive up to 47% faster purchases.
When decisions are guided by context and framed in consumer language in real time, retailers know that customers buy more and buy faster. Enabling shoppers to leverage AI in the early and middle stages of discovery and reducing purchase friction is now paramount. As a result, retailers are testing various hypotheses and shifting their strategies to win the long game. Most see the greatest need for change in the early and middle stages of discovery, particularly for exploratory questions that are difficult to translate into keywords.
Rather than replacing search, conversational interfaces are becoming a parallel retail layer, where intent is clarified and shaped before a purchase is ever made. Retailers are responding to this shift in distinct ways. Since late 2025, a series of announcements has revealed not just adoption, but a pattern of strategic bets that signals where commerce is going next:
Retail Bet #1: The Elimination of Friction Between Intent and Action
Walmart’s partnership with OpenAI introduced the idea that a conversation could move search seamlessly from discovery to transaction, allowing customers to purchase products directly within ChatGPT. Similarly, Target announced a ChatGPT shopping beta with basket-building, multi-item checkout, and fulfillment options. Both announcements marked a fundamental departure from the browse-and-buy “journey” model that has defined eCommerce for decades. More broadly, industry data shows that customer journeys are compressed into a single conversational flow in which discovery, evaluation, and purchase occur within one continuous exchange.
Retail Bet #2: Betting on Parallel Agentic Decision Recommendations
Retailers have long embraced AI. Amazon, for example, has used AI for nearly two decades to shape search results and deliver recommendations designed to drive clicks and conversions. Now, we see another major shift as retailers embrace strategies and parallel systems that serve both human shoppers and AI agents that can interpret, filter, and recommend on the customer’s behalf.
Walmart’s expansion across multiple AI ecosystems, including integrations with both ChatGPT and Google Gemini, reflects a strategy to ensure its products are surfaced and selected within these agent-driven environments. At the same time, emerging infrastructure such as Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol is being built specifically to allow AI agents to navigate across retailers, manage transactions, and coordinate the shopping experience end-to-end. eBay built an AI shopping agent for personalized discovery. Lowe’s “Mylow” AI assistant already handles ~1M+ queries/month for tasks like DIY help, product search, and order status, while Sephora has invested in AI personalization and conversational consultation.
Retail Bet #3: The Redefinition of Conversion
While conversational commerce dramatically improves engagement and mid-funnel performance, early retailer experiments reveal a more nuanced reality. Walmart’s initial tests of in-chat checkout showed lower conversion rates compared to directing customers back to its own website. This has led to a rapid evolution in strategy, with retailers embedding their own experiences within conversational platforms rather than fully outsourcing the transaction. This suggests that conversational commerce is not simply replacing existing channels – its greater value lies in influencing decisions upstream, where intent is formed, and confidence is built. By the time a customer reaches checkout, the outcome has often already been determined within the conversation.
Retail Bet #4: Democratization of AI-Driven Commerce Capabilities
What was once limited to large enterprise retailers is now being distributed across the entire ecosystem. Retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart are placing big bets on Agentic Commerce. But unlike the rise of eCommerce, conversational commerce is democratizing quickly across independent and smaller retailers. Platforms such as Shopify, Wix, and Square are embedding conversational tools directly into their offerings, enabling even small merchants to participate in AI-driven shopping experiences. For instance, Shopify introduced the “Agentic Commerce” platform and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). With this, Shopify merchants can sell directly within AI channels (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Copilot), embed checkout inside conversations, and offer “agentic storefronts” connecting merchants to AI agents. This gives every Shopify merchant access to conversational retail capabilities with similar performance potential.
Brand leaders must recognize that another structural shift is underway and prepare their strategies, plans, and organizations to respond accordingly. Retailers are proactively building parallel experiences that shift shoppers to a more dynamic, compressed, and lower-friction exchange. For now, conversational commerce will not replace traditional eCommerce, but it will change all aspects of go-to-market readiness – from what it takes to show up as a Category Captain or ASP Walmart vendor to how SKU priorities evolve across yet another channel.
Want to win in AI Commerce? Simpactful can help! Our team of Retail and eCommerce experts can assess your preparedness and help put the right plans in place to ensure you are ready for what’s ahead. Contact us today at contact@simpactful.com or 925-234-6394. Visit www.simpactful.com.
