🚨Breaking🚨: Alexa for Shopping Launches: Amazon Merges Rufus and Alexa. We Have a First Look, Details, Use Cases and Deep Analysis... 👀
In addition to the big Amazon 'shopping assistant merger and rebrand', there's new features too! 🤯
One Amazon Assistant to Rule Them All: Welcome to the “Alexa for Shopping” Era:
Amazon announced today they are combining Rufus and Alexa+ - their two separate shopping agents have now been combined into one named Alexa for Shopping.
All devices, the Amazon website, mobile apps and Echo devices will all be moving away from Rufus and/or Alexa to the new brand: Alexa for Shopping.
“Alexa for Shopping is like having an expert personal shopper who already knows you and remembers your preferences, your past purchases, and your conversations, and carries that knowledge and understanding of you across your phone, laptop, and Echo devices,” said Rajiv Mehta, vice president of Conversational Shopping at Amazon. “Whether you’re comparing products, tracking a price drop, or continuing research you started yesterday, you don’t have to start over.”
Shared Context/Memory Across All Surfaces
Amazon examples of how your shopping preferences and contexts can be multi-modal/multi-device-al.
Use Case 1 (Web→Device Example)
One example is - let’s say you setup an alert for a Nintendo Switch 2 that is frequently out of stock using the Alexa for Shopping on your desktop website Amazon.com. That evening at 10pm you are home and your Echo device has a notification that the Switch 2 is now available and you can order it from the device.
Use Case 2 (Device→App Example)
In this example, you could be talking with Alexa on your Echo Show with your 16yr old to think through different science fair projects and choose the project. Then when you are on the Amazon app on your phone ordering some dog treats, Alexa for Shopping prompts you with a list of products you’ll need for that science experiment - you remember you forgot to order them earlier in the day and you throw them in the cart and the arrive over-night with the dog treats. Alexa for shopping remembered this context that started on an Echo device and surfaced it on the mobile phone app during a standard shopping session.
When Will Alexa for Shopping Role Out and What Does it Look Like?
Amazon says that over the coming week this will role out and the Rufus icon will be replaced by an Alexa icon across all surfaces. We know that Prime Day is coming in June this year, so this will all be rolled out before Prime Day I imagine.
Right now in the US as of 8am ET for me on the website it’s switched over (see above) in the website, but not on the mobile app.
On the help docs they do show the mobile app will look like a stylized ‘Alexa a’→
All Amazon customers can use Alexa for Shopping for free when signed into their account, no Echo device, Alexa app, or Prime membership required.
On the PDP and under the hero image there’s a sparkly treatment.
Here’s the hero page on the help docs for the new Alexa for shopping:
🔮This Move Was Predicted Over a Year Ago!?!🤔
If this all sounds oddly familiar to you, Amazon 1P “Rufus Whisperer”, Andrew Bell, found an Amazon patent over a year ago and from that patent predicted that this exact move would happen - as one prediction maker to another - that’s a 💯 prediction! (details here, here and here). Wow - mad respect to Andrew on 🎯 this one! 🫡
Other Rufus Alexa for Shopping Updates.
Note: Some of this was covered already in previous posts through leaks and early discoveries here and here.
Unified Search Bar (semi-covered already) - You can now ask Alexa for Shopping questions right in the Amazon search bar and it recognizes when you’re asking a question and Alexa for Shopping and routes it to Alexa for Shopping to help answer it — from general questions like “What’s a good skincare routine for men?” or “How to plan a unicorn-themed birthday party,” to product comparisons like “Breville Barista Express vs Pro” or “Compare Kindles,” to order inquiries like “When did I last order AA batteries?” or “Where is my order?”
New Compare Products Functionality - Compare products from search results: Select multiple products directly from your search results and Alexa for Shopping will compare them side by side, helping you quickly evaluate features, prices, and reviews to find the best option.
AI Overviews (covered) - Get AI overviews in search and on product detail pages: Alexa for Shopping surfaces AI-generated overviews at the top of search results in the Amazon Shopping app, giving you a quick summary of a product category and what to look for before you start browsing. You’ll also find AI overviews on product detail pages to help you make more informed purchase decisions. The feature is already available to millions of customers and rolling out to all U.S. shoppers.
Price History Updated to 1 Year - Check product price history for up to a full year: Tap “Price History” on any product detail page or ask Alexa for Shopping for the price history to see how the price has changed over the past year on hundreds of millions of products in Amazon’s store.
Schedule Routine Purchases: When chatting with Alexa for Shopping, tap the “+” icon next to the message bar to create a Scheduled Action, such as adding healthy kids’ snacks to your cart each month, restocking regular household items like pet food, paper towels, and detergent, alerting you when your favorite author releases a new book, or getting gift ideas ahead of family and friends’ birthdays and holidays. You can also get more specific with prompts like “Add this sunscreen to my cart if the price drops to $10 and I haven’t purchased it in the last 2 months.” Alexa for Shopping handles the product research and will either notify you or add relevant items directly to your cart — as a one-time action or on a recurring schedule — so all you have to do is review and check out.
Easy Add to Cart: Effortlessly add items to your cart: Alexa for Shopping can search past orders and add them to your cart or quickly build new carts with conversational directions. Say things like “add my regular dog treats” or “add my frequently ordered cleaning products” or “add my favorite protein bars to my cart,” and then check out with a tap.
Personalize Your Experience/Memory: View and update details like family members, pets, interests, dietary needs, and more by simply asking Alexa for Shopping what it knows about you. This is live today: prompt this: “Review my shopping preferences”.
Custom Shopping Guides - Learn about new product categories and items: Whether you’re making a big purchase like a TV or exploring a new product category for the first time, Alexa for Shopping can create a custom shopping guide that compares features, prices, and reviews across Amazon and the web based on what matters most to you.
Analysis: Why Now and What’s the Strategic Move Here?
Why now? This makes logical sense- two shopping assistants is one too many and the use cases make a ton of sense.
Amazon, for the first time in 20+ years faces a competitor, Agentic Commerce, facing them on two fronts:
A frontal ‘selection assault’ from a group of 5+ powerful and large attackers.
A flanking ‘horizontal assault’ via a super-assistant attack also the group of 5+ attackers.
That’s a lot of ‘incoming’ attack vectors for a company that has run over all the big retailers with barely a speed bump.
What’s the strategic move?
While on the surface this may feel like a re-brand, I think it foreshadows something much bigger. Amazon’s just announced ‘embrace and extend’ UCP strategy is designed to counter the ‘selection attack’.
The horizontal assault is tougher to counter and is illustrated here:
In his Q2 remarks, Jassy was very specific to say that the Amazon vertical shopping experience will always be superior at shopping vs. horizontal, but this doesn’t make a ton of sense, because yes it will always be a better shopping experience, but it will increasingly lose the battle of “overall context”. This shows us they are thinking a lot about this.
Here’s why it’s a threat.
People are telling ChatGPT about their trips, their car shopping, their kids, their meal plans, their finances, their business plans, their health care issues and fitness regiment. That’s a list of 8 shopping-adjacent contexts that Amazon is totally blind t, but ChatGPT can use to help you find products. They are sneaking up on Amazon from the side. Oh let’s talk about your skin-care - 5 turns in and you’re buying a beauty product not even sold on Amazon - this is Amazon’s worst nightmare.
Before ChatGPT none of this was a concern as none of this shopping-adjacent was collected in one place that even threatened shopping Expedia, WebMD, etc were, if anything, Amazon associates. Now here’s the first time that’s not the case, consumers love it, they are innovating at an insane pace and to make matters worse, you have 6 mega cap companies going after this opportunity. This is not a typical a 2-dimensional flanking diagram, it’s a 6-headed hydra coming at you on a 3-D chess board.
How Do You Defend Against a Horizontal Super Agent?
The best way to de-risk the horizontal agent threat is to…Expand Alexa to be YOUR horizontal super agent. Use your shopping wedge to go wide before the attackers can create a wedge into your high gound.
My prediction is over the next year we’re going to see Amazon take Alexa wide/horizontal by adding health, travel and other features to have an answer to both the product selection attack and horizontal personal assistant attack they now face from Agentic Commerce and the Answer Engines.
What’s Next?
Will these new attack vectors work? Too early to call, Amazon’s in a great position and it’s strategy reaction here feels appropriate and it’s rapid compared to the emergence of the threat. This Holiday will be an interesting battle in the war and we’ll be reporting on it from the front lines. Stay tuned.