The New Competition

Imagine you are just starting to run.

You run three times a week and you do not know much about running shoes.

You open ChatGPT and write:

“I’m just starting to run. I run three times a week and I want a pair of shoes that will last. What would you recommend?”

The conversation begins.

You can explain where you run. Say what concerns you. Change your budget. Ask for an alternative. Ask it to compare two models.

There is something interesting about that scene:

you did not start by looking for a brand.

You may not even have started by looking for a category.

You started by trying to solve something.

And that opens up a question consumer brands should start asking:

What happens when a technology begins to participate in the moment when a person decides what is worth considering?

01From searching for a product to explaining what you need

For years, a large part of digital commerce was built around a fairly specific action: search.

A person would type running shoes, protein powder, or healthy snacks.

The platform returned results.

Comparison began from there.

Conversational artificial intelligence introduces another possibility.

Instead of having to know the right words in advance to find something, a person can describe their situation and ask for help making a decision.

Recommendations are not new. We have always asked friends, salespeople, specialists, or people who know more than we do.

What is new is that technology can participate in that conversation, process the context we provide, and help us build an answer.

OpenAI is developing product discovery and comparison experiences within ChatGPT. Walmart has also announced a partnership with OpenAI to connect its retail offering with shopping experiences inside ChatGPT.^{1, 2}

This does not mean every purchase will begin in a conversation with AI.

It means something more interesting:

the place where a person discovers what they should buy can begin to move closer to the place where they ultimately buy it.

02And this is already entering purchase decisions

Recent NielsenIQ research helps put the shift into perspective.

In its Consumer Outlook: Guide to 2027, published in October 2026, 55% of surveyed consumers globally said AI recommendations influence their household and food purchases at least occasionally.

In addition, 27% said they had used AI tools to research or decide what to buy during the previous three months.³

This does not mean AI has replaced search, retailers, advertising, or recommendations from other people.

But it does mean that technology is already entering a part of the process that once seemed exclusively human: researching, comparing, and deciding.

And when that moment changes, the place where a brand can compete changes with it.

03Meanwhile, retail is building new places to compete

The transformation is not happening only through artificial intelligence.

Amazon allows brands to use Sponsored Products to appear within search environments and product pages.

Instacart offers sponsored products in search results and category navigation. Walmart Connect also sells advertising space within its digital ecosystem.^{4, 5, 6}

The phenomenon exists across different markets and platforms, but the logic is similar:

the retailer is no longer only where people buy. It can also become where people decide what to consider.

A search within an online supermarket can surface certain products.

A category can organize alternatives in a particular way.

A platform can recommend.

A brand can pay to appear.

A person can ask an AI.

These are different mechanisms. We should not conflate them.

But they all point toward the same transformation:

there are increasingly more systems between a person’s need and the product they ultimately choose.

04Showing up is not the same as being chosen

This is where an important distinction appears.

They are not the same thing.

A sponsored product can appear in front of a search and still not be chosen.

A brand can be part of a comparison and lose to another.

A recommendation can include a product that nobody ultimately buys.

Even in AI-powered search, appearing is not guaranteed. Google states that its AI search experiences continue to rely on fundamental search principles and helpful content, while also making clear that following those practices does not guarantee appearing in results.⁷

So the question should not simply be:

How do we get to appear in AI?

That is too small a question for a much larger shift.

The more interesting question is:

What does a system need to understand in order to consider our product a good answer to a need?

And even before that:

What was the person trying to solve before they searched for our product?

05The question that comes before the category

Think about someone who has just started training.

They may not immediately search for a specific protein product.

First they ask:

How can I consume more protein?

Then:

What should I have after training?

Then:

What options do I have if I am not reaching my daily requirements?

At some point, a category appears.

And then, brands.

Something similar can happen with a snack.

A person may be looking for what to eat mid-morning, what to take on a hike, what to eat after exercising, or what can be easily carried during a trip.

The need appears before the product.

And that changes how we should research a category.

It is not enough to study the words people use once they are already searching for our product.

We can also ask:

• What problem were they trying to solve?
• What question did they ask first?
• What alternatives did they have?
• What information did they need to decide?
• What other categories could answer that need?
• What do they find today when they are not yet looking for our category?

That last question can be particularly uncomfortable.

Because a brand may have an excellent answer to a need that nobody yet associates with it.

06The new competitive territory

For a long time, brands have thought about competition primarily through the category.

Who sells the same thing?

Who has the better price?

Who has more distribution?

Who has greater awareness?

Who is buying more media?

All of these remain important questions.

But now there is another layer.

What happens before the person reaches the category?

That is where questions, recommendations, content, search, retailers, algorithms, reviews, and conversations with technology appear.

They do not all work the same way.

They cannot all be bought.

They cannot all be controlled.

But they can all influence which alternatives make it into a decision.

And perhaps that is why brand competition no longer starts exactly where we thought it did.

It does not begin when someone compares our product with a competitor’s.

It may begin much earlier.

At the moment when someone is still trying to understand what they should buy.

So the question changes.

It is no longer only: How do we get them to choose us?

It becomes:

What needs to happen for our brand to become one of the options someone considers?

And perhaps, before that, there is an even more important question:

What were they looking for just before they searched for our product?

About the author

Rafael Peralta es estratega de comunicación y director de One Headlight, estudio creativo y agencia de publicidad. Trabaja en la intersección entre estrategia, creatividad y producción para transformar objetivos de negocio en comunicación.