Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw Companies Limited, recently announced that the company is partnering with Google to allow AI shopping in Google’s Gemini and AI Mode. This move accelerates the adoption of AI-driven ecommerce in Canada and gives millions of Canadians a new way to shop.
The partnership also extends beyond simply AI shopping and also shows that Loblaw is all in on AI, as the move follows another partnership the company recently began with OpenAI and ChatGPT.
Google and Loblaw Partner to Bring AI Shopping to Millions of Canadians
In a recent blog post, Loblaw Companies Limited announced that the company has collaborated with Google to bring Canadians a new way to shop through conversational AI. The announcement said that Loblaw will soon allow Canadians to shop for health, beauty, and apparel products directly through the Gemini App and in Google’s AI Mode.
The company is the first large retailer in Canada to make products available directly through Google AI mode, and Loblaw says the move is another step toward redefining the customer shopping journey.
Loblaw sees this as a natural evolution of how customers want to shop, as it makes shopping simpler and more personalized for customers.
While not every customer may use a feature like this, stats show that consumers are generally comfortable with using agentic commerce. In fact, a recent report found that 77% of consumers are open to using some agentic commerce features.
Collaboration Extends Beyond Just AI Shopping
While the main aspect of the collaboration is allowing Loblaw customers to shop for some items through Google’s AI-powered platforms, it also extends beyond just shopping. According to the announcement, Loblaw will scale the company’s use of Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to help speed up Loblaw’s transformation into an AI-native organization.
The company has already used Google Cloud for years, but this was mainly for other retail functions like merchandising, supply chain, and even the store floor itself.
The Announcement Follows a Partnership With ChatGPT
While this is the most recent move that Loblaw has made in the AI space, it wasn’t the first. Recently, the company partnered with OpenAI to launch the PC Express app in ChatGPT. The app uses the power of ChatGPT to help customers explore menu ideas, create ingredient lists, and select products from their local store.
The partnership also sees Loblaw give colleagues access to ChatGPT Enterprise, in an effort to improve both innovation and productivity. These moves are important, as they show that even large companies that primarily operate in physical retail environments are getting involved in AI.
These partnerships, and others like them, make sense as many companies are preparing for many more transactions to take place either with the assistance of AI or in AI conversations entirely. For example, forecasts predict that agentic AI may be responsible for between 15% and 25% of total US ecommerce sales by 2030.
As a result, ecommerce companies, small and large, need to be prepared for a world where AI plays a major role in not only how people discover and compare products, but also buy them.
