Berli Jucker Public Company Limited (BJC)’s Big C, one of Thailand's largest retail chains, has launched an AI-powered shopping assistant chat to enable customers to shop using natural language conversations instead of navigating product categories or relying on keyword searches.
The new assistant can search Big C’s product catalogue, identify ingredients required for recipes, and automatically calculate quantities based on the number of servings requested by customers.
The AI system built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) leverages multiple specialised AI agents that operate simultaneously to deliver more contextual shopping recommendations. Amazon Bedrock AgentCore orchestrates interactions between the various AI agents, while Amazon Bedrock Guardrails provides safeguards designed to ensure response accuracy.
For instance, a customer looking to prepare a meal can simply describe what they want to cook, and the assistant generates a curated shopping basket containing all required ingredients, with quantities adjusted automatically. The platform also supports order-tracking queries, allowing shoppers to check delivery status through a conversational interface.
According to pilot results, the conversational shopping experience has helped customers discover a broader range of products across fresh food and daily essentials categories, contributing to an estimated 5-10 percent uplift in basket size.
The company believes conversational commerce can shorten the path to purchase by enabling shoppers to complete complex product searches and meal-planning tasks within a single interaction.
Surachai Hirannitichai, Group Chief Digital Technology of BJC Big C said, “Customers do not think in keywords or product categories. They think about meals, occasions, and what they need to get done."
“With AWS, we are making shopping faster and more intuitive by helping customers discover multiple relevant products naturally through conversation while unlocking broader opportunities to scale AI innovation across multiple business functions.”
Big C operates 1,750 stores across Thailand serving approximately 20 million customers. The initiative forms part of its broader digital transformation strategy aimed at making online shopping more seamless while driving higher customer engagement and sales conversion.
AI accelerates development cycles
Big C's digital transformation extends beyond the customer-facing experience. The retailer's engineering and product teams are also using AI-assisted development tools to accelerate enhancements to its digital storefront.
According to the company, development tasks that previously took weeks can now be completed within days, enabling faster rollout of new product categories, recommendation capabilities and multilingual features.
Vatsun Thirapatarapong, Country Manager at AWS Thailand, said the project demonstrates how conversational AI is reshaping digital retail experiences. “Amazon has … been helping customers find what they need across hundreds of millions of products. What that taught us is simple: the future of retail isn't a catalogue, it's a conversation,” he said.
“With Big C's conversational Shopping Assistant, customers are discovering more products per query, adding complementary items they'd never have found through keyword search, and completing transactions at higher basket values,” he added.
