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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

#271

Post by conductr »

newsoftheday wrote: post #190
bilekas wrote: post #95

ChatGPT Checkout, a solution looking for a problem. Why would anyone have an extra layer of friction too where things could go wrong, where handing over payment details in another chain. Just let me buy my stuff in peace. Shopping is not the 'killer app' for GenAI.

> Why would anyone have an extra layer of friction too where things could go wrong It sounds like you're excusing AI, what other systems is AI not suitable for?

When I read that sentence I thought of travel booking sites. The kind that are unavailable to help you when you arrive at a hotel that has no record of your reservation. The kind I avoid precisely because I’ve had enough problems like that where it’s not worth saving 10% and I’d rather just book direct and avoid the headaches.

When the hotel, airline, car rental, etc. can’t even talk to me because of the channel I purchased from that’s a problem. So I’d expect similar issues from buying through a AI interface. Walmart will say something about “we can’t see your order details” when your delivery driver forgot the milk.

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

#272

Post by janalsncm »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #249
janalsncm wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the best proxy metric is whether the customer returns the product. But the store will also be willing to eat more returns on a higher margin item if they make more profit at the end of the day.

I don't think I agree. If I overpay by 10%, I'll never know it and probably wouldn't return it even if I did know--once the shrinkwrap is off, too late. If a superior product exists but I don't find it, by definition I wouldn't know and wouldn't return the thing I did buy.

Cynically, the customer might not know if they overpaid but the retailer doesn’t care about that. Where “making the best choice” actually cashes out is the customer DAU dropping (rare) or product returns increasing.

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

#273

Post by dylan604 »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #266
bilekas wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a distopian hellscape you've painted into my brain. I work long and hard to not interact with my neighbors.

that's sad. my neighbors are wonderful and i like chatting to them. are you the bad neighbor?

Yes. Not interacting with neighbors is something that can happen naturally, but working hard to not is an entirely different thing.

Knowing your neighbors is a good thing. Even if it's just a friendly hi. You don't have to hang out, but if there's ever something you need like "did I leave the sprinkler on" or "did I leave the stove on" or "borrow a cup of sugar", it helps being on speaking terms with a neighbor rather than your first interaction with them is because you need something.

Caveat being that you live next door to Epstein or similar where not knowing them will be beneficial when the police come asking questions.

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

#274

Post by ProfessorLayton »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #252
otherme123 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I came away thinking if those were presented as affiliated links, that conversation could have been monetized in a mutually beneficial way. I also ask LLMs for product recomendations. But the moment I suspect they are hidding the best items (not paying for the ad) to push the second best (not even talking about pushing shit as good products because they pay more) is the moment the LLM loses its value as recomender.

How do you know what recommendations you can trust from the LLM output?

You don't. Use various other LLMs to check each other's work.

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

#275

Post by dkarl »

bilekas wrote: post #95

ChatGPT Checkout, a solution looking for a problem. Why would anyone have an extra layer of friction too where things could go wrong, where handing over payment details in another chain. Just let me buy my stuff in peace. Shopping is not the 'killer app' for GenAI.

These interactions really don't get the testing they need.

When they aren't designed, how do you know how to test?

Over the weekend, I was directed to file a police report with a chatbot and could not complete it because it was asking for information that did not exist and did not apply to my case.

(I'm sure somebody is going to say that this can be solved by having LLMs role play as victims and have an LLM observe and decide what's a failing test case and what isn't.)

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

#276

Post by keeda »

wat10000 wrote: post #255
keeda wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, I think that's a good monetization vector for chatbots. Long back I asked ChatGPT to recommend a few USB hard drives with very specific requirements -- including a small size and weight ("can be duct-taped to a tablet form-factor device without being obtrusive and constantly falling off"), low cost, and speed fast enough to boot an OS from. After a pretty technical conversation, it came up with 3 v…

The trouble is that monetization and usefulness tend to be in conflict. It starts out as, show affiliate links if there are any. Then it turns into, prefer targets that we have affiliate agreements for. Then, don't show products unless we have affiliate agreements. Then, prioritize ones that give us more money. And on and on. If they want to capture some of the value they provide, they should do it the standard fashi…

Yes unfortunately, the forces of enshittification will be at play with any model provider that has had billions invested in it.

> If they want to capture some of the value they provide, they should do it the standard fashion where they directly capture value from me by having me pay.

That would be ideal, and that's what their subscription products are for, but even their free versions provide so much value that is hard to capture. That's what I meant by chatbots being constrained by their "Free Internet app" form-factor... Consumers on the Internet largely just are not willing to pay, nobody managed to get micro-payments to work, and so the reserve currency of the web is ads.

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

#277

Post by nitwit005 »

__alexs wrote: post #5

(Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. A chat interface is just fundamentally incompatible with this. The agent makes it too easy to ask questions and comparison shop.

I feel the opposite. It's inconvenient having to type (or voice) anything.

How much text do you have to type into Amazon when shopping? Usually just a product category, and then you just scroll and click around. A lot of the optimizations, like showing related products, or saving payment or shipping info, are essentially reducing text entry.

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

#278

Post by xnx »

sethhochberg wrote: post #234
xnx wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Definitely historically true, but I think the equation might be changing if I have an AI as a concierge shopper to do the grunt-work of browsing through a bunch of stores to extract useful product info and prices.

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

#279

Post by jwpapi »

I think the issue is that on Walmart they can upsell more. It’s really gonna be tough for ChatGPT to beat that, but arguably its better for customer. So Open AI could just go for the Amazon Model, where merchants will make less money, but are eventually forced to sell through

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

#280

Post by try-working »

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.

meta-search sites in travel (Skyscanner, etc) have the same problem of out of date cached information from the merchant. not solvable in practice because there's so much traffic volume and low rate of conversion that you must cache for cost reasons.
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