e-Conomy SEA 2026: The AI Adoption Gap Facing Sellers

What happened

On 21 October 2026 Google, Temasek and Bain & Company published the
eleventh e-Conomy SEA report. The figure that led most coverage was digital economy gross
merchandise value growing 17% this year.

The figures further in are the ones worth your attention. Across the six main Southeast
Asian markets, 243 million people have adopted generative AI in under three years. That is
58% of the working population. Half consult it weekly and almost a fifth use it daily.
Among consumers in those markets, 69% use AI to compare product options, and 93% say they
trust the recommendations they get from it. The report also notes that only around 1 to 2%
of the population currently pays to use generative AI
(e-Conomy SEA 2026).

Our read

Set those numbers beside something older. A Facebook and Boston Consulting Group study
published in 2019 found that 40% of online shoppers in Thailand, 36% in
Vietnam, 29% in Indonesia, 26% in Malaysia and 23% in the Philippines had already bought
through a chat conversation
(reported
via KrASIA).

So customers in this region were buying in conversations seven years ago, and now they
research with AI before they start the conversation. Both halves of that behaviour belong
to the customer. Neither required the business to do anything.

The 1 to 2% paying figure is the one that defines the gap. Adoption at this scale is
happening almost entirely on free consumer tools. Consumers re-tooled how they shop in
three years at no cost. The businesses they buy from have not re-tooled how they answer,
because that part costs money and effort and nobody made them.

That is the gap. It is not a technology gap, since the tooling is available and most of
it is cheap. It is a gap in who moved.

Three consequences for anyone selling here

Your product information is being read by a machine before a person sees
it. If 69% of shoppers compare options with AI, then your product pages, your
policies and your public answers are being summarised on your behalf. A page that is vague
about materials, sizing or delivery timing does not merely fail to persuade. It produces a
wrong summary that the shopper then believes.

The fix is unglamorous and within your control: make your published facts specific,
consistent and in one place. Two prices for the same item across your website and your
Instagram catalogue is now a worse problem than it was, because something will average
them.

93% trust means a confident wrong answer about you gets believed. That
cuts both ways. It is an argument for being precise in public, and it is an argument about
how you run your own automation. If you put an AI in front of customers, its answers need
to come from your real data rather than from a plausible generalisation. A wrong return
window stated confidently at 11pm becomes a dispute with your own chat as evidence. See
AI hallucination.

The last question is where the order is won. A shopper who has compared
three options with AI arrives at you already informed, with one specific question left. Is
there one in black. Does it arrive before Saturday. Can I move the appointment. Answer that
in seconds and you get the order. Answer it tomorrow morning and the comparison they
already did sends them elsewhere. See
first response time.

What the report does not justify

Two of its figures will be quoted at you by vendors this month, including, in less
careful hands, by people selling what we sell.

The report says AI is delivering order volume uplifts “as large as 75%” for some
commerce players. “As large as” describes a ceiling observed somewhere. It is not a
forecast for your business and should not be used as one.

It also projects that AI use across the region could be up to 60 times higher by 2030.
That is a direction in a market moving fast enough to make 2030 unknowable. Interesting,
not actionable.

What the report does establish solidly is adoption, and adoption is the part you can act
on. The 17% growth figure describes the market. The 58% figure describes your
customers.

What to do about it

Make one correct, specific set of facts about your products and policies, in one
place.
Cover the hours you are closed with real answers, not a holding message.
Connect payment and delivery to the conversation, so an answered question can become
an order. See the Southeast Asia picture in full.