Platforms pushing experience-led commerce
Major e‑commerce players are shifting toward AI, video and real‑time personalization to turn discovery into sales rather than relying only on catalogue listings. That platform move toward content-driven merchandising was recently reported as a deliberate strategy to capture intent-driven shoppers (fortuneindia.com).
E-commerce platforms are rebuilding shopping around video, artificial intelligence and live signals so people buy from what they see, not just what they search. (fortuneindia.com) Flipkart told Fortune India it is moving beyond a marketplace model toward an “experience-led platform” built on artificial intelligence, real-time data and content-driven discovery. The company said the shift is aimed at shoppers who arrive with intent but still need help deciding what to buy. (fortuneindia.com) Amazon has been making a similar bet through Rufus, its generative artificial intelligence shopping assistant launched on February 1, 2024. Amazon said in a December 2025 engineering post that more than 250 million customers had used Rufus that year and that shoppers who used it were 60% more likely to complete a purchase. (aboutamazon.com, aws.amazon.com) At the same time, Amazon pulled back from one social-commerce format. TechCrunch reported on February 18, 2025 that Amazon shut down Inspire, the short-video and photo feed inside its app that had resembled TikTok. (techcrunch.com) That split points to the new shape of online retail: platforms still want discovery, but they are testing whether a chat assistant, a recommendation engine or a creator video converts better than an endless product grid. Shopify’s Summer 2025 Editions release packaged that approach into tools for store design, artificial intelligence and checkout across more than 150 updates. (shopify.com, shopify.dev) Shopify also added infrastructure for “agentic” commerce, where software can act more like a sales clerk than a search box. Company materials around Summer 2025 highlighted Storefront Model Context Protocol and a Shopify Catalog that lets shopping agents search merchant inventory in real time. (shopify.dev, pymnts.com) Video is already proving it can move product at scale. Momentum Works said TikTok Shop generated $15.1 billion in gross merchandise value in the United States in 2025, up 68% from 2024, with video driving 50% of sales and live commerce contributing 14%. (momentum.asia, thelowdown.momentum.asia) Creator platforms are wiring that behavior into mainstream video, too. YouTube says creators in its Shopping affiliate pilot who tagged Shorts with relevant products saw average views rise by as much as 8% versus videos without tags. (support.google.com) The business logic is straightforward: catalog search works when shoppers know the item name, but content and artificial intelligence are better at handling vague prompts like “summer wedding guest dress” or “best trail shoes for wet weather.” Amazon said Rufus is trained on its catalog, customer reviews, community questions and information from across the web to answer exactly those kinds of shopping questions. (aboutamazon.com, amazon.science) The risk is that more personalization also means platforms decide more of what shoppers see first. Flipkart said its next phase includes smarter search, creator-led commerce and faster delivery, while Amazon, Shopify, TikTok and YouTube are all trying to turn recommendation systems into checkout systems. (fortuneindia.com, m.thewire.in, shopify.com, momentum.asia) The result is a simpler storefront for shoppers and a more competitive one for platforms. The new contest is not over who lists the most products, but over who can turn attention into a sale fastest. (fortuneindia.com, aws.amazon.com, momentum.asia)
