Key Highlights:
- Perplexity AI now offers a personalized, conversational shopping experience where AI understands your preferences and past searches to curate best picks for you.
- The platform also integrate PayPal for instant checkout without redirecting you to other sites.
- The new shopping experience focuses on user needs over advertiser-driven results that boosts purchase intent and reduce cart abandonment.
Ever since we started to get comfortable around AI, automation has been one of the important aspects of our daily lives. And it appears that shopping is the next thing AI companies are tapping into. Just yesterday, I talked about ChatGPT’s ‘Shopping Research’ and detailed how precisely the buyer guides are curated by ChatGPT based on your preference, your budget, and everything else. With the holiday season kicking off, Perplexity has also jumped into the scene of AI-powered shopping, and it finally fixes what online retail got wrong.
Perplexity AI can now shop with you this holiday season
As part of the new shopping experience, Perplexity AI will help you look for products online via conversational search. The AI assistant will understand your chat history, learns what matters to you, and pulls out information to help you make a buying decision. Perplexity’s shopping experience is somewhat similar to ChatGPT’s ‘Shopping Research.’
For example, Perplexity AI will help you discover things in the way you think. As Perplexity puts it, when you ask, “What’s the best winter jacket if I live in San Francisco and take a ferry to work?”, the AI will find results that match your commute instead of generic best-of lists. And when you follow up with, “What about boots?” Perplexity AI keep the same context and acts as a shopping assistant that knows you.
Perplexity notes that the AI remembers your past searches and learns patterns from it. To give you an example, the company notes:
Perplexity remembers your past searches and learns your patterns, so when you ask about a desk lamp today, it finds options that match your mid-century modern aesthetic, not what advertisers want to sell first. If you’ve been looking at minimalist running shoes for an upcoming marathon, it prioritizes simplicity when you buy a new bag before race day.
Also read: Perplexity offers feds months of access to ‘Enterprise Pro for Government’ platform for free
A shopping assistant that knows you
To put things simply, you don’t have to go across different online platforms with endlessly scrollable grids to just buy what you want. Perplexity AI can create product cards that focuses on what matters to you the most, alongside specs and reviews that requires you to say yes or no. It is the kind of contextual awareness retailers have talked about for decades, but rarely offered in a way users actually feel.
Not to forget, the company is also partnering with PayPal to integrate checkout directly into the shopping flow. If you want a last-minute product for someone visiting on short notice for your holiday dinner, you can instantly buy it without being bounced to another site or new tab, and then return to your conversation to keep planning the rest of your trip. To remind you, Perplexity has surpassed OpenAI in this regard, as the latter is yet to integrate what it calls as “Instant Checkout.”
Perplexity is being careful not to become another ecosystem trying to own the customer relationship. Unlike traditional search platforms that prioritize click-through rates and ad revenue, this system helps retailers by offering qualified buyers. And, here I’m talking about someone who has already clarified their needs through a back-and-forth conversation.
Availability and what it means for retailers
The new AI shopping experience is live on desktop and web for users in the US. Whereas, support for iOS and Android will be introduced over the coming weeks. Unlike the usual recommendation engines that serve results based on advertisers’ priorities, Perplexity pitches it as shopping that puts you first. Perplexity further adds that with this approach, it can help elevate purchase intent dramatically and reduce cart abandonment, thanks to instant checkout in the mix. From retailers’ POV, they get increased visibility, more control, and access to genuine customers, and not just people passing through clicks on sites.
