Ecommerce Meta Game in 2025

Will Instant Checkout by ChatGPT dominate ecommerce?

Less than 3 weeks ago, industry and social media was flooded with "end of an era" articles and posts asking this very question and either trying to answer it or just jumping to over-hyped conclusions.

But is it the right question?

Let's rephrase it:

Will Instant Checkout be able to fix a bad go-to-market strategy?

Should an established ecommerce business change its strategy based on it?

How should a new ecommerce business approach this?

These are the questions that ecommerce businesses actually ask.

Are those good questions?

Some of them are driven by the FOMO effect spreading among ecommerce owners and operators.

Because when you see and hear AI-related news, over and over again, you can't help but think that you're missing out.

All the more so, regardless of whether you're just starting your business, or you have a 7-8-9-figure business, or you want to buy one, it's worth understanding the current landscape of a market that is estimated to be worth $7.89 trillion by 2028.

Should Instant Checkout be treated as a brand new channel?

For some time now ChatGPT has worked more like ecommerce blogs used to work.

They capture customer intent on research stage level. Only now, it's not a monologue, it's a back and forth conversation, with your background and an ultra level of personalization.

Obviously no content marketing strategy could ever offer that.

From this point of view, Instant Checkout is exactly what the name suggests it to be. It's an Instant Checkout, it's a shortcut that shortens the shopping journey for your customers.

So the real questions are:

• How many users, at the end of the research, will be ready to buy right now?
• And if not, how many of them will get back to this conversation after some consideration?

Based on OpenAI report - ie. number of users, percentage of product-related queries and regional limitations - there is about approx. up to 16 million ChatGPT conversations weekly that are now potentially empowered by Instant Checkout.

Four major ecommerce channels

Aside of AI ecommerce, we currently have 4 major ecommerce channels.

Marketplaces

... like Amazon, Etsy, Walmart Marketplace, Mercado, Vinted, or Allegro. They have now about 60–70% of global market share.

Brand DTC stores

... powered by Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, BigCommerce, Magento, VTex and other platforms. They have about 20–30% of global market share.

Live / Social Shopping apps

... like Taobao, Douyin, Whatnot, Palmstreet or TikTok Shop - all with 10–15% global market share, which comes mostly from China where live shopping is a gigantic market.

App-first discounters

... like Temu and Shein with 2–3% global market share.

Value is built upon user interest

All those figures tell a part of the story of global ecommerce in 2025. But the real story isn't in those numbers, it's in customer behavior.

In the end of the day, behind every single sale on any ecommerce platform, there is a human decision. In ecommerce, the technology itself isn't the answer - the customer-focused business model is.

Technology changes, but people do what people did 50 years ago. They buy stuff and they do that using currently available tools in the limited ways.

And maybe that is exactly what the Palmstreet and Whatnot app examples are trying to show us. That value is built upon user interest. That you can win by building ecommerce on top of other activities and interests.

Ecommerce is no longer only ecommerce. It's a blended user experience.

Customer shopping modes

People think, consume, contribute and make decisions in at least 6 different shopping modes:

• in Convenience mode, when people want good or well-known options quickly with strong defaults and fast delivery.
• in Deal rush mode when limited-time offers and visible savings create urgency, so shoppers tolerate more uncertainty.
• in Trust-in-creators mode that relies on social connections and social proof that builds trust.
• in Guided answers mode when shoppers seek data and rationale framed in their goals and constraints.
• in Brand affinity mode when people buy to express values and reduce future decision costs.
• in Interest/community mode when buying grows out of a shared interest and niche communities.

These modes describe different kinds of behavior, based on speed, certainty, triggers like price and scarcity, identity, and trust.

And they are all channel-agnostic.

That single fact creates an ocean of business opportunities: from local store doing a live shopping events to DTC stores hijacking the traffic from ChatGPT with their own AI agents to marketplaces used as an MVP to quickly accumulate social proof and product ratings.

How to pick the right channel?

That's why, when debating a channel for an ecommerce business, you have to take into account dozens of different factors, from CAC and margin pressure to regulatory risks, different advantages and disadvantages of each channel and how they align with your business.

But what you also want to do is to understand that it's not only the channel that should fit your business, it's the customer behavior mode that you want to embrace in your strategy.

The future will not belong to ecommerce businesses that grasp every new feature out there.

The future will belong to platforms, apps and merchants who understand the behavior patterns and will be able to build a business model upon them.