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In-app shopping: The world’s default store is emerging

A new kind of store is taking shape. One that does not live on a website, in an app, or even behind a search result. It lives inside the platforms people already use every day, like ChatGPT and Amazon. This is in-app shopping, and it is quickly becoming the world’s default store for everything.

From browsing to buying without leaving the app

Amazon has been quietly refining their AI shopping model. When users choose to ‘shop brand sites directly’ in the Amazon Shopping app, they are taken to a product detail page inside Amazon’s webpage.

With the Buy for Me feature, customers can tap a single button and have Amazon complete the purchase on the brand’s own website on their behalf. The transaction happens without the customer ever needing to navigate away from Amazon. The brand still fulfils the order. Amazon owns the experience.

ChatGPT is moving in the same direction

ChatGPT is now experimenting with a similar in-app commerce model. Through Instant Checkout, users can buy products directly inside chat. In the U.S., ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can already purchase from Etsy sellers, with over a million Shopify merchants, including Glossier, SKIMS, and Spanx on the horizon.1

For instance, users commonly ask ChatGPT for product recommendations2, like “what is a hydrating lip gloss that suits my skin tone?” ChatGPT can not only analyse the consumer’s data (e.g., a photo of them) but can also reply with a short, curated set of options. Each option, from different brands, may include information on the description, price, delivery, and a “buy now” option. The entire journey, from discovery to checkout, happens inside one chat.

At launch, Instant Checkout supports single-item purchases. Multi-item carts, more merchants, and additional regions are next.

Why this matters for marketers

In-app shopping collapses the funnel.

Discovery, consideration, and checkout now happen in one continuous flow, inside someone else’s interface. There is no landing page optimisation, no cart abandonment email, no redirect to a brand site.

The platform becomes:

  • The storefront
  • The checkout
  • The experience layer

Brands provide the product, pricing, and fulfilment.

The shift in power and responsibility

This model offers enormous reach and conversion potential, but it also reshapes brand control.

Marketers need to think about:

  • How products are represented when the platform owns the UI
  • How brand value is conveyed through data, not design
  • How trust is built when checkout happens elsewhere
  • How pricing, availability, and returns are governed across platforms

Just as search and social once became mandatory, in-app shopping is becoming unavoidable.

The takeaway

In-app shopping signals the rise of platform-native commerce, where the best place to sell is wherever the customer already is.

For marketers, the question is no longer “should we participate?” It is “how do we show up well when the store is not ours?”

The brands that adapt early will shape how this new default store works.

Exclusively available to ADMA Members, the ADMA AI Toolkit is a marketer-ready guide on how to use AI effectively and responsibly – developed by industry for industry 

 

[1] https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/

[2] https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/chatgpt-as-a-search-engine