How AI-Powered Shopping Will Reshape CPG Strategy

Walmart's integration of ChatGPT into its shopping engine is a signal — not of doom for retail media networks, but of a necessary evolution for CPG brands. 

For more than a decade, brands have relied on a mix of trade marketing, bid-based retail media, and joint business planning (JBP) to gain share of shelf and mind. 

But conversational AI changes the game. The "shelf" is no longer a linear scroll of search results or a neatly arranged in-store display. It's a dynamic, probabilistic response to a consumer's intent.

The Proxy Shopper Has Arrived

Consumers increasingly start with queries such as, "What ingredients will make the best gluten-free Italian sandwich?" AI doesn't just search keywords. It interprets context, cuisine, dietary restrictions and even weather. 

In this world, the large language model (LLM) isn't only a search engine – it's a proxy shopper. And like any smart proxy, it's not taking orders blindly. It's synthesizing multiple signals: the shopper's needs and history, and the structured and unstructured data it has on every product.

But this isn't a threat to retail media. It's a challenge to CPG brands: Optimize for both the shopper and the proxy. This will require elbow grease at granular levels.

Why PDPs Are the New SEO

In an LLM-first discovery journey, product detail pages (PDPs) become strategic assets. If they read like marketing brochures, they fail. If they answer jobs-to-be-done, they win. Consumers buy products to accomplish a job, and they buy brands to be emotionally connected to the purchase.

Consistency matters. Brands must ensure that core structured data (ingredients, use cases, formats, certifications) is aligned across all retailers. This ensures AI sees the product clearly. 

But contextual nuance matters. A product positioned as "great for kids' lunches" at Walmart might be "ideal for clean snacking on the go" at Whole Foods. The trick is to maintain a consistent semantic spine while tailoring language to each retailer's context.

CPGs will need to prioritize which retail partners deserve bespoke treatment versus which get scaled consistency. Not every shelf is worth the same effort, but every LLM query is a potential shelf.

Strategic Actions Brands Can Take Now

1. Standardize your product taxonomy across retail partners: Jobs-to-be-done language, need states and structured data.
2. Pressure-test your PDPs by feeding them into ChatGPT and seeing what it recommends based on consumer-style prompts.
3. Coordinate PDP strategy with off-site and influencer messaging to reinforce the same jobs and the same product associations.
4. Invest where it matters: Nuance your content for top retailers with deep shopper insight. Apply standardized content elsewhere.
5. Treat LLMs like strategic partners, not targets. You're selling to both humans and machines. Optimize for that relationship.