Meta has integrated shopping features within its messenger service and collaborated with e-marketplace Shopee to use Shopee's merchant product catalogues for Messenger to help Shopee merchants close sales on multiple platforms.
Meta and Shopee chose Thailand for the launch of the new shopping feature on Messenger.
It is thought that move is aimed at competing with the increasingly popular TikTok platform and boosting Meta's advertising revenue and Shopee's user traffic.
"We have more than 60 million Facebook users in Thailand, one of the top levels globally in terms of Messenger users," said Prae Dumrongmongcolgul, Facebook Thailand's country director.
The shopping feature on messenger enables businesses and shops to sync their Shopee catalogues with messenger to create a seamless shopping experience for Thai consumers, said Tanyathorn Laowachara, head of seller management at Shopee (Thailand).
According to Meta's latest data, Thai businesses are pioneers in the adoption of business messaging, with 91% satisfied with using the messenger feature to communicate with their customers. This underscores Messenger's critical role in business growth and customer engagement in Thailand.
"We will make Messenger a centre to connect everyone, going beyond chat to become an 'enabler of commerce'," said Ms Prae.
Meta has also joined hands with V Rich App, a leading Thai e-commerce solutions provider, to run a beta test with its Live Shopping tools that would make it more efficient for businesses to drive product discovery and close sales via livestreams. These products would be available for businesses in Thailand from mid-June through Meta's partnerships with V Rich App, ZWIZ.AI, Kaojao and others.
Ms Prae said the company is also preparing to launch artificial intelligence (AI) for business by empowering its large language model Llama3 to support Thai language and automate responses more naturally by emulating a human to manage relationships with customers.
Meta's AI is expected to learn about the business through product catalogues, she said. Consumers would then be able to chat via AI in order to browse the catalogue, consider different items, and then decide what to purchase.