Frasers Group has become the first European retailer to enable direct purchases through generative AI chatbots, marking a major step in its AI strategy.
The Frasers Group is implementing an agentic commerce suite which will enable customers to discover products and complete purchases directly within genAI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
The retail giant has partnered with AI-powered commerce platform on the rollout.
This move makes it the first retailer in Europe to implement the agentic commerce technology from commercetools, signaling its strategy to position itself as a leader in AI-powered shopping and provide richer personalisation for customers.
Frasers Group, which owns several well-known clothing retailers including Sports Direct, Flannels, and House of Fraser, said the partnership represents a key part of its broader AI strategy to “reinvent” the customer journey across its brands.
David Clark, chief customer officer at Frasers Group, said the digital customer ecosystem is evolving “faster than ever”, in line with customer expectations.
Commenting on the move towards agentic commerce, he said: “This marks a shift in our digital capabilities, delivering an even more intuitive and personalised shopping experience for our consumers.”
The move comes after Walmart announced earlier this week a partnership with OpenAI that enables customers and members of Sams’s Club to complete purchases directly within ChatGPT.
The AI firm announced the launch of Instant Checkout last month.
In September, OpenAI said that the new feature would begin with US Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants to follow.
Clark added that its partnership with commercetools builds on the group-wide investment in MACH architecture to drive the Group towards “a new era of seamless agentic commerce,” with the implementation of new tools that further accelerate the retailer’s AI strategy.
Frasers Group announced its investment in MACH digital architecture as part of a partnership with Valtech, Lab Digital and AND Digital in early May 2024, as part of a major overhaul of its retail brands’ digital infrastructure.
The acronym MACH stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless, with the platform aiming to improve inventory management and product tracking, empower decision-making across operations, and deliver hyper-personalised e-commerce experiences.
