Shoppers are going to be clicking on the one in the middle a lot more in the future.
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In 1991, there were under three million internet users in the U.S. By 2024 that number grew to 322 million.
In 1999, internet sales were about 1/2 of 1% of total retail sales.
ChatGPT was launched on November 30, 2022. Within five days it had about one million users. By June 2025, 87 million people in the U.S. had used it. In just the first six months of 2025, the number of queries grew by 70%. Regular users in the U.S. right now are about 70 million.
With over 85% of the U.S. population having shopped online and the explosion in search using ChatGPT, it seems inevitable that more shopping is going to move over to ChatGPT and other chatbots like Perplexity, Grok, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.
Given the growth, the acceleration of shopping with chatbots could be even steeper.
The State Of ChatGPT Shopping
At the moment, shopping searches using ChatGPT are small, only about 2.2% of all ChatGPT searches according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). But usage of ChatGPT is changing a lot right now as new users join and the way people use ChatGPT evolves.
The numbers are somewhat in dispute. Bain & Company says shopping is over 9% and my guess is somewhere in the middle. Either way, it’s a low number and a small percent of total usage now.
In June 2024, 47% of ChatGPT queries were work-related questions. By June 2025 the usage had changed dramatically and 73% of all queries were non-work-related. The largest uses were for (in order of importance):
– Writing – creating, editing, criquing
– Practical guidance – how-to, tutoring, health, fitness, beauty
– Technical help – software coding, mathematical calculation, analysis
– Image creation and analysis
It’s also important to remember that you can’t shop on ChatGPT (yet). Using ChatGPT for shopping means doing research. When a user makes a purchase, they have to leave ChatGPT and use a browser to buy online.
Who’s Using ChatGPT
According to NBER, while early users were primarily male, it now breaks down close to 50/50, with females in a slight majority. Nearly half of all queries to ChatGPT are from users 18-25 years old. Those younger users are much less likely to be using ChatGPT for work. That implies that the people who use ChatGPT for shopping right now are likely to be younger consumers. That comports with what I’ve been told by retailers who track their users’ paths to purchase.
What This Tells Us About The Future
With ChatGPT’s rocketing growth and the history of internet shopping acceleration, it makes sense that the small amount of shopping happening now on ChatGPT is going to explode.
That’s not about how companies use ChatGPT, it’s how shoppers use it.
NBER data says users are very satisfied with the responses they’re getting from AI. So it’s reasonable that shopping on Chat GPT and other chatbots will grow to include more types of products and older consumers. And it won’t take a long time. The growth is so fast that shopping on ChatGPT will be a major force in retail in the foreseeable future if trends continue.
Who’s Ready For This?
Pretty much no one.
Lots of people are experimenting. Consumers are trying new ways to find what they want. Brands and retailers are testing methods to get the chatbot to recognize their product.
When retailers and brands talk about AI and ChatGPT and other chatbots, they talk primarily about using it in their operations and very little about how to direct consumers to their sites and stores. But it’s coming.
What will work best to attract consumers by chatbot is unknown. And what works now may not work as well when lots more consumers become users and lots more brands are vying for attention via chatbots. It’s being invented in the moment.
There’s a lot of new science, like AI agents, software that will go out and find what you want and buy it for you, being talked about. But that’s largely not in use right now.
Now the question is how consumers will conduct their searches, what queries will they ask and how can retailers and brands get to be part of the answer.
That makes this a moment of huge risk and enormous opportunity. The right marketing can make a less important brand more successful. And sticking to the playbook of Google/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok will leave certain brands behind.
Why It Matters
The habits of consumers are moving faster than the strategies of most retailers and brands. Just as search engines and social media reshaped shopping, chatbots like ChatGPT are going to reset the table again quickly.
It calls for experimentation and quick adaptation. Waiting for a proven playbook is not going to work.
The only question is when and the answer is likely to be: very soon.