Conversational commerce
Conversational commerce is selling and completing a sale inside a messaging conversation, rather than sending the customer to a website to finish it.
What it means in practice
A customer messages your Instagram account at 10pm asking whether you have the olive tote in stock. In a usual setup you reply the next morning with a product link, and the customer either buys on your site or doesn’t. In a conversational commerce setup, the reply comes straight away. The customer sees two options, picks one, gets a payment link in the chat, pays, and gets a delivery estimate in the same thread.
Every step outside the conversation is a step the customer can drop. The Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22% (Baymard, September 2025). A sale that completes in the thread never reaches that checkout. See cart abandonment.
The four pieces a chat sale needs
- Something to choose from. A catalogue the conversation can read: a store such as Shopify, a Meta or Instagram catalogue, or a Google Sheet.
- A way to pay. A payment link sent into the chat, such as an Airwallex link.
- A way to get it there. A delivery booking, with updates sent back to the same chat. AeroChat books delivery with your courier through its API.
- The conversation itself. Something that reads the question, checks the catalogue, sends the right link and handles the follow-up.
Most businesses already have one or two of these. The gap is usually the fourth.
The public figures
| Figure | Scope |
|---|---|
| 73.3% of consumers prefer messaging when contacting a business | Kantar survey commissioned by Meta, 11,056 adults, 22 markets, fieldwork April to September 2025 |
| 72.4% are more likely to buy from a brand that offers messaging | Same survey |
| Global retail spend through conversational commerce channels: US$11.4 billion in 2023, forecast US$43 billion by 2028 | Juniper Research forecast, 2023 |
| Share of online shoppers who had bought through a chat: Thailand 40%, Vietnam 36%, Indonesia 29%, Malaysia 26%, Philippines 23% | Facebook and Boston Consulting Group study, 2019 |
Sources: Meta, State of Business Messaging (Meta sells business messaging). Juniper Research via Business Wire, 2023. Facebook and BCG, reported by KrASIA, 2019.
The Southeast Asia study is old, so read it as a picture of how normal chat buying already was in the region before AI replies arrived. No recent public figure breaks chat purchases down by country.
Why it is a customer service subject too
The thread that takes an order also gets “where is my order”, “can I change the address” and “I want to return this”, often within the same few minutes. Selling and service were separate when selling happened on a website and service in an inbox. In a chat they are one thread, so the same system has to handle both. See WISMO.
A chat that answers questions and then sends the customer to a website to pay is useful messaging. It becomes conversational commerce when the payment happens in the chat.
Related terms
Read next
- Conversational commerce in practice: the four pieces a chat sale needs
- How to start selling in chat when you have no website
- Southeast Asia already buys in chat
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