Amazon widens Alexa text shopping for product searches and reorders

Amazon has widened access to its Alexa for Shopping text-message feature. The company updated its announcement on November 13 to say texting was broadly available to customers of the AI shopping assistant. The rollout began on November 6 with invitations to a small group of U.S. customers.

Shoppers who sign up can ask for product suggestions, add an item to a cart or start a reorder from their phone’s messaging app. Texting gives customers another place to reach the assistant they could already use in Amazon’s app and on its website.

Starting by text and continuing in the app

Amazon says its sign-up page uses a QR code to connect shoppers with a phone contact called Alexa Shopping. A shopper can message a description of a product and get suggestions in reply. Amazon also describes using a photo to find similar items.

Amazon is rolling out a separate ability to carry shopping requests between text, the Amazon Shopping app, its website and supported Alexa devices. In the company’s example, a customer starts a gift search by text, then resumes the comparison and checks out in the app. Amazon’s November 13 update concerns broad access to the text feature. The company describes the handoff between devices as a rollout still in progress.

Amazon’s help page says the assistant retains context for the signed-in profile in its existing app, web and Alexa experiences. Shoppers can review and manage their shopping conversations in Alexa History. Amazon brought its earlier shopping assistant Rufus together with Alexa+ in May and described keeping a shared account context for preferences and conversations. The help page distinguishes the storefront’s shopping experience from controls such as setting timers, which can send the customer to another Alexa interface.

Finding the item and approving the order

In Amazon’s example of a repeat purchase by text, the assistant locates an item in the shopper’s order history and buys it with approval. Finding the item, adding it to a cart and approving the purchase are distinct steps. The company says shoppers can also text to ask when an existing order will arrive.

The broader assistant has price alerts and auto-buy. Amazon’s feature guide says a price alert sends a notification when an item reaches the shopper’s target. With auto-buy set up separately, the assistant uses the default payment method to place an order when the price condition is met. The instruction determines whether reaching the target produces an alert or a purchase. A different option, Scheduled Actions, can research a recurring shopping task and notify a customer or prepare a cart for review and checkout.

Product discovery can also include listings from stores outside Amazon. Its existing Shop Direct service can send a shopper to the outside store to finish the order. For certain items, an option called Buy for Me lets Amazon purchase from that seller. Amazon’s documentation says the customer confirms details such as the delivery address, tax, shipping and payment on Amazon’s checkout page. Amazon passes along the seller’s order confirmation, while the seller handles delivery and returns. The Shop Direct guide says the merchant name is displayed and shoppers are told when they are leaving Amazon for the seller’s site.

In its third-quarter earnings release, Amazon said more than 400 million customers had used Alexa for Shopping over the preceding 12 months. That figure covers the assistant across its shopping channels. The November update gives no user count for texting. Amazon separately lists availability for the broader assistant in 13 countries, while the text announcement gives no country-by-country rollout schedule.

Amazon says it also plans to add automatic order updates, delivery notices and deals to the text thread over time. It gives no date for those additions.