Amazon Brings Alexa for Shopping Into Text Messages for U.S. Customers

Amazon has started an invite-only U.S. rollout of Alexa for Shopping by text, giving selected customers another way to search, compare and buy products across its retail services.

Customers who accept the terms and link a phone number can use a text thread labeled “Alexa Shopping.” They can ask the assistant to find products, compare options and suggest items, then build a cart. For example, a customer can approve a laundry detergent reorder.

Shoppers can also share photos to find similar products, check up to a year of price history, track price drops, manage lists and get order updates. The text conversation can move among messaging, the Amazon Shopping app, Amazon.com and Alexa-enabled devices. Shopping preferences and conversation context carry across those channels.

The text option extends Alexa for Shopping beyond the app and website. Amazon renamed its Rufus shopping assistant as Alexa for Shopping in May. Its earlier expansion added more than 100 shopping capabilities, including tools for lists, registries and recurring deliveries.

More than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the 12 months through Sept. 30, and interactions increased 570% year over year. Those figures describe the broader shopping assistant, not the text feature specifically. The figures cover activity through the end of Amazon’s third quarter.

Amazon plans to invite millions more customers in the coming weeks. It has not disclosed the size of the initial group or how many orders the text service has generated, leaving its use so far unquantified.

“Your personal shopping agent is just a text away,” said Rajiv Mehta, Amazon vice president of Conversational Shopping.