Breaking: ChatGPT Launches ChatGPT Shopping Research
While we were waiting for Target App *OR* Walmart's launch *OR* Salesforce Commerce Cloud launch, we got...a surprise new feature!
Today ChatGPT announced a surprise feature while we’re waiting on a bunch of launches that were previously announced (Target app, Walmart Instant Checkout and Salesforce Commerce Cloud) called ChatGPT Shopping Research.
The announcement is here and features this sizzle video:
How to Try it!
You have to be logged in and have a free, go, plus or pro account. Under the + sign you now have→ “Shopping research”
Once you’ve selected ChatGPT asks: “Where should we begin?” and you’ll see the blue Shopping Research ‘mode’ enabled underneath the prompt bar like this→
Now the shopping world is your oyster and you can go in a bunch of different directions. If you want to save time, I recommend putting in a couple of sentences so the engine knows where to look and can ask you fewer questions.
Quick Take and Video on the Experience
Last week I did a live demo of the Rufus ‘Compare’ feature, you can find here.
In the below video I take ChatGPT Shopping Research through the exact same flow.
Rufus vs. ChatGPT
I’d rate ChatGPT a B behind Rufus’ A on the two ‘help me find the right product feature sets. Here’s how they differ:
ChatGPT takes a good bit longer to get to the same answer. It walks me through some questions, then it has a product vote piece that seemed superfluous (asked me about products out of range of my prompt AND answers to the spec questions I just did? It then gave me products that didn’t meet my criteria.
Rufus has more of an arena type model where I selected 4-5 products and then Rufus helps me understand the features and using that I narrowed the criteria to realize there was really one winner - the Ninja which they both got to in the end.
I can definitely see ChatGPT being better for something I was at the tippy-top of the research phase on whereas Rufus was better when I was pretty close to the ‘find’ middle of the funnel.
In either case, it’s going to be interesting watching both companies iterate and improve this and I often wonder- would Amazon be doing all of this without the threat of Agentic Commerce? We’ll never know, but I suspect the answer is no.
Live Demo Video
Here’s a ~7min video of me walking through a real-world example (same as Rufus for apples-to-apples) using ChatGPT Shopping Research.
What’s Next in Agentic Commerce for This Week?
We’re expecting a big big week for Agentic Commerce and are watching for:
Perplexity/PayPal ‘Instant Buy’?
Walmart on ChatGPT?
Salesforce SCC on ChatGPT (watching pandora, adidas, michael kors and lorel)
Microsoft Copilot agentic commerce - coming out for season or no?
OpenAI/Target app // Target on Instant Checkout?!
Any (more) surprises, if we’re gonna have a big surprise, it’ll be this week
Stay tuned!