The Maze:
Source: About Amazon. Amazon’s example shows Alexa replying to a gift request with a specific product and an option to buy it.
Amazon started inviting a small group of U.S. shoppers to text its shopping assistant on November 6. A shopper can ask Alexa for Shopping to find a gift, get options back and approve a purchase from the same conversation. Amazon already offered the assistant on its app and website. The new starting point is the phone’s messaging app, where Amazon says people already jot down what they need. For brands that sell on Amazon, that means the first product a shopper sees could be the one Alexa puts in its reply.
The Details:
A phone contact can take the order. Invited shoppers accept the terms and link their number. They can then message a contact called Alexa Shopping. A shopper can describe an item, ask for comparisons or send a photo. Alexa can recommend products, add the shopper’s choice to the cart and place the order after approval. In Amazon’s published example, a shopper describes a type of flower bulb and gets a specific product with a purchase option. For shoppers who set up automatic buying, the assistant can also buy an item when it reaches a target price. These shopping tools predate texting. Amazon combined its earlier shopping chatbot, Rufus, with Alexa+ in May, and says it is now rolling out the ability to pick up a text conversation in the shopping app, on the website or on an Alexa-enabled device. The company plans to extend text access to millions more U.S. customers over the coming weeks.
The ad can show up while the shopper chooses. Amazon Ads already offered prompts on search results and product pages that opened a shopping conversation when someone tapped them. Digiday reports that a Sponsored Product, Amazon’s term for a product ad, can now be among the suggestions in a conversation the shopper has already started. It says Amazon is initially charging advertisers nothing for the text placement and keeping purchases the assistant makes on its own ad-free. The potential audience is easy to overread. Amazon’s quarterly release counted more than 400 million people who had used the shopping assistant in the preceding 12 months across the existing service. The number gives no count of shoppers using the text feature.
An outside store can appear in the conversation. Amazon says the assistant can also find products from other online stores through Shop Direct. Its separate merchant portal lets eligible retailers verify their sites and submit a product feed, a file or connection that shares catalog details. A Shop Direct link can take shoppers to the store’s website. For items eligible for Buy for Me, Amazon can complete the purchase on the store’s site after the shopper confirms the details in Amazon’s interface. The retailer still handles shipping, returns and customer service. Amazon’s texting announcement confirms that external products can appear in the replies. It leaves open which of those products shoppers can buy entirely by text.
MarketMaze Take:
For an Amazon seller, a recommendation in the reply could do some of the work of a search result. A shopper who asks for a gift and sees one convincing option can move straight to an order. A shopper who asks Alexa to reorder a specific item gives competing brands much less room to make a pitch. That distinction matters more than the headline audience figure. If Amazon starts charging for text placements, brands will need to know which requests showed their products and whether those ads won orders that would otherwise have gone elsewhere. A purchase that simply moved from the Amazon app to a text thread has a different value to the advertiser.
