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Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

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Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#231

Post by janalsncm »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #219
janalsncm wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT doesn’t know what the best-converting dog food in Scranton, PA is. Amazon does. Anything that starts with chat history presumes the theoretical limit for ad effectiveness is higher than it is now, and chat is a better way of getting there than actual purchase history. I have a feeling it’s not. Imagine a person who shops on Amazon for basically everything. So theoretically Amazon should know a ton about them,…

No... I'm not saying chatgpt will do better than amazon. >> passed in full to the e-commerce website that will use it to... I'm saying Amazon+chat data will do better than amazon. Thats the agentic shopping play. In the process note that the chat host also gets a lot of info over time.

Ok fair point, and the general principle of “more data=higher accuracy” probably applies.

I think the issue is the tradeoff between accuracy and cost (on the seller’s side). If you get more accurate and convert more but your costs go up too much, you actually lose money.

Current systems are basically in a sweet spot of speed, cost, and accuracy.

And I will go back to my previous point that I believe there is simply a limit to how much people will buy, and it might already be saturated. I could be wrong though.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#232

Post by xnx »

janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

> E-commerce has been optimized to the last decimal point for the last 30 years

Sort of, but there's a ton of middlemen between "resources in the ground" and "product in my hand". For example, how much utility is there in a "store" to thee consumer at this point? Let me buy from the manufacturer.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#233

Post by MBCook »

infamous-oven wrote: post #158
darthoctopus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't want to put in the human time and effort to do so In most circles, that is "not that interested in getting good at it".

It's really hard to be a generalist and better than all the specialists at everything. OpenAI wants to focus on the G in AGI, and optimizing for ecommerce is just not that interesting to them, so of course it can't compete with Walmart.

And yet that’s what all the AI boosters are claiming.

What do you know. Reality does t match.

I wonder if returns on ChatGPT purchased items are also higher.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#234

Post by sethhochberg »

xnx wrote: post #232
janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

> E-commerce has been optimized to the last decimal point for the last 30 years Sort of, but there's a ton of middlemen between "resources in the ground" and "product in my hand". For example, how much utility is there in a "store" to thee consumer at this point? Let me buy from the manufacturer.

Manufacturers themselves generally don't want to sell directly to consumers: consumers are fickle and need support and have questions and sometimes want refunds or returns and if you sell directly to them, you need to have the staff and policies to deal with all of that. They're also located all over the world, and you might not want to deal with figuring out taxes and duties etc for shipping your product around and figuring out your warranty obligations everywhere you want to sell.

Much easier if you can sell wholesale (sometimes via distributors) to a retailer or network of retailers, and the retailer is responsible for owning the customer relationship, dealing with their part of import/export, local regulations, etc. Retailers are businesses who will buy hundreds of your product at a time, can accept it as palletized freight, and pay you via bank EFTs instead of credit cards.

There are notable exceptions to this model like Amazon's FBA system, but they're the outliers. I'm sure we can all point to inefficiencies in legacy product distribution networks but they solve some real problems.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#235

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

CryptoBanker wrote: post #210
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in yours? Someone can want a thing, even very badly, without wanting to put in the work for it. Conversely, someone can work very hard for something they do not want. The linkage between wanting a thing and wanting to do the work to get it is not absolute, or necessary there at all.

There’s a difference between being interested in getting good at something and being good at something

Exactly. Just because you're not good at something doesn't mean you don't want to be.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#236

Post by jimbokun »

janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

Seems like a ripe opportunity for partnering with one of these companies that are already good at it?

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#237

Post by turtlesdown11 »

janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

> OpenAI is new to it, and if I had to guess, not that interested in getting good at it.

Maybe if they burn more tokens the answer will become clear

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#238

Post by alex43578 »

oofbaroomf wrote: post #223

ChatGPT recommended me some good hard drives for price per TB, and one particularly cheap one had direct checkout with Walmart, so I tried it, because why not? It let me get all the way to the payment step before it told me it was out of stock. Walmart's website told me it was out of stock when I decided to click on the link. This is probably part of why it doesn't convert.

That's typical of my experience with all of these stock-aggregator sites. Either the best price is some dodgy or outright fake storefront, the item's OOS from the real vendor, or the price is out of date.

Trying to buy things like GPUs or SSDs are a joke. I really wish even one vendor would just implement an actual waiting list, locked to an account with a verified address and purchase history. I'm fine to wait for my purchase, but having to race bots for a lottery ticket purchase is a pain.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#239

Post by djeastm »

kenjackson wrote: post #209
wavemode wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbh this sounds revisionist... I don't recall anyone saying that any of those services "wouldn't work". Uber I suppose is one where people thought they might run into regulatory problems, and with some of those companies people were concerned about profitability. But none those companies have I ever heard that the product itself was not going to work or be useful. (Nor, indeed, that the product was tested at large sc…

Not revisionist at all. or Netflix, or Amazon, or Uber, or PayPal, etc… Netflix and Amazon both were competing against brick and morter that were everywhere. Blockbuster was in every town, usually in every major neighborhood. The thought was that on Friday night people wanted to get a movie they wanted, not just happen to have the movie that was shipped to them. And then with streaming it was "the content on Netflix…

I seem to recall a lot more hype for these companies than people saying it won't work. You seem to be cherry picking from the naysayers of the time, but not the broad consensus.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#240

Post by jborden13 »

oofbaroomf wrote: post #223

ChatGPT recommended me some good hard drives for price per TB, and one particularly cheap one had direct checkout with Walmart, so I tried it, because why not? It let me get all the way to the payment step before it told me it was out of stock. Walmart's website told me it was out of stock when I decided to click on the link. This is probably part of why it doesn't convert.

Sounds like an opportunity for a live inventory context layer before an LLM makes recommendations
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