AI in E-commerce: BTG Pactual Reveals who wins or loses in the New Digital Market

BTG Pactual looks at the rise of artificial intelligence-driven “conversational commerce”, with ChatGPT emerging as a new player in the e-commerce landscape.This evolution promises to benefit some businesses while challenging others, fundamentally altering online sales dynamics.

The New Frontier of Conversational Commerce

The “conversational commerce”, powered by tools like ChatGPT, is moving out of the experimental phase to become an economic reality. BTG Pactual highlights the growing integration of ChatGPT into the e-commerce ecosystem, where Shopify merchants already pay a transaction fee of 4% on sales made through the platform. This move is seen by analysts as OpenAI launching a new layer of marketplace.

Distribution, historically a bottleneck for digital sellers, is being addressed in an innovative way. While Amazon has solved product discovery through research, ChatGPT proposes a different interface where users describe their needs in natural language rather than using keywords.With over a million affordable Shopify merchants and billions of annual product-related queries, ChatGPT already operates on a scale comparable to mid-sized marketplaces.

Cost and Structure Advantages

One of the main disruptions pointed out by BTG lies in costs. At Amazon, a seller with US$ 1 million in gross volume of goods can pay between 25% to 30% in fees before logistics, including referral and advertising fees.In return, the 4% transaction fee of ChatGPT, combined with the 2.9% processing of Shopify, results in a total cost of about 7%. This structure is significantly cheaper than that of competitors such as Walmart, TikTok Shopify and Etsy, with the mandatory promotion of the absence of bidding systems.

How ChatGPT Transforms the Shopping Experience

When a user asks a purchase-related question, such as “best running shoes for less than R$ 500”, ChatGPT displays relevant internet products.These results are organic and ranked by relevance. If a product is compatible with “Instant Checkout”, the user can finalize the purchase directly in the chat using express payment methods or already registered cards.This functionality, initially available to users in the US with Etsy sellers and later expanded to Shopify merchants, promises to simplify the purchase process.

Impact on Market Players

BTG considers the entry of ChatGPT as a marketplace a strategically negative move for established platforms that rely on paid search, such as Amazon and Google Shopping.For Shopify, OpenAI emerges as a powerful ally, expanding the reach of merchants without adding friction.Sellers can benefit from a channel with less risk, where product relevance returns to be a competitive advantage.However, there remains doubt about the sustainability of OpenAI monetization in the long term and whether the platform will be able to resist convergence to paid scarcity models.

Global GWI Study, Jun 2024

• BTG evaluates who wins and who loses with AI as a marketplace '' '' Money Times, Money Times.