OpenAI announced a new feature, Instant Checkout, on Monday, allowing users to purchase products directly through ChatGPT, in partnership with Etsy and Shopify. Thus, hundreds of millions of products sold by merchants on Shopify will be available in a completely new format. For the Croatian e-commerce sector, this is, as Tomislav Bilić, an e-commerce expert and director of Inchooa, states, much more than a technical novelty.
Revolution, Not Evolution
– The Shopify & OpenAI partnership is not just another step in optimizing checkout, but a paradigm shift for all eCommerce projects. Until now, we have designed web shops, categories, and the flow of user experience. The focus has been on visual and content interaction with humans. Now we see how checkout becomes part of the protocol itself where the store is structured so that the AI agent can understand, display, and conclude the purchase without visiting the web. This is more than evolution. This is a revolution, says Bilić.
Bilić also introduces a new term that will characterize the future of online shopping – intentless commerce. This is a way of shopping where the customer does not have to explicitly express their intent (e.g., searching for ‘Livai’s white jersey, size L’) to reach the product. Instead, the AI agent captures ‘soft signals’ from the conversation, context, or behavior and directs the user towards the purchase.
Croatia is Just at the Beginning of Transformation
When it comes to the readiness of Croatian webshops for this change, Bilić is realistic. Many countries, including Croatia, are just at the beginning. A large number of online stores do not even have their data properly structured. A nice banner or animation does not mean much to AI agents – they need clean attributes, GTIN codes, and structured data according to standards. If that is not available, the web shop simply does not exist in their ‘universe’. We are entering a period where domestic merchants will have to run to catch the global train of standardization.
One of the most interesting changes concerns the role of brands and emotional marketing. The AI agent makes decisions based on data, but this data also includes information about the customer. An agent that is frequently used knows a lot about user preferences and can accurately infer what is important to them when making a purchase. Impulsive and emotional purchases will still be there, but they will gain a new dimension.
The brand will still have its role, but it will change focus. Brands will no longer ‘manipulate’ the emotions of the end user through promotional messages, but will have to ‘convince’ agents through clean data, reputation, and reviews.
– Perhaps it is time to add a new term alongside customer loyalty: AI agent loyalty. Because it is not important what the customer feels about the brand, but how the agent values your catalog. If your data is not clean, the agent will simply skip you, no matter how well-known your logo is. This may be the most provocative change: loyalty is shifting from people to machines. You are no longer just convincing the customer that your product is good, but also the AI agent who will advise your traditional customer, explains Bilić.
