How Singapore Shoppers Actually Buy in 2026: AI, Marketplaces and Your Own Store
Something shifted in the last two years. Your customer no longer starts at Google. They ask ChatGPT what to buy. They scroll TikTok and see a product. They check Shopee for the price. Then, maybe, they land on your store.
Most advice tells you to pick a side. Go all-in on marketplaces, or quit them and build your own store. Both are wrong. The data from Singapore says something more useful: each channel now does a different job, and you need them doing different jobs.
Every figure in this article is linked to its source, with who was surveyed and when.
Shopping with AI is already normal in Singapore
72% of Singaporeans have used AI assistants to help with shopping. That comes from the Adyen Index 2026 Singapore Retail Report, a YouGov survey of 1,041 Singaporean adults run in March and April 2026.
This is not a future trend. It has already happened, and not only among young people. The figure across all adults is more than seven in ten. Younger adults are higher still: 85% of Gen Z and 80% of millennials say they use AI assistants.
Ask the shoppers who use AI what it does for them, and the answers are telling. 72% of them say it helps them cut through the noise online. 68% say it gives them inspiration faster.
AI is hunting for brands, not listings
66% of AI-assisted shoppers in Singapore want to use AI to find unique brands and shopping experiences. This is the most important number in this article.
People are not asking AI to find the cheapest item. They can already do that on Shopee in ten seconds. They are asking it to find something good. Something specific. Something they would not have found on their own.
A marketplace listing struggles to answer that. It is one row in a grid of near-identical rows, sorted by price. A brand with a clear point of view can answer it. That is the opening.
If you want the practical side, how AI tools read and rank a store, we cover it step by step in our Shopify AI search optimisation guide.
But AI does not close the sale for you
It is easy to get carried away here. AI can send someone to your store. Your store still has to win them over. And it gets very little room for error.
When they hit a payment error at checkout, 59% of Singaporean shoppers say it has a negative impact on how they see the brand. It gets worse from there. 24% say their trust drops significantly. 20% say they would abandon the purchase and avoid that retailer in future. 15% say they would switch to a competitor. (Same Adyen report.)
So the job splits in two. AI brings people to you. Your checkout keeps them. If AI is about to send you better-qualified visitors than you have ever had, the checkout they land on cannot be the weak part.
Singapore marketplaces are busy, but the baskets are small
Now look at what the three big marketplaces actually deliver in Singapore.
| Platform | GMV, FY2025 | Growth | Average order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopee | US$3.7 billion | +10% | S$25 |
| TikTok Shop | US$2.4 billion | +24% | S$25 |
| Lazada | US$1.7 billion | −23% | S$39 |
Two things stand out.
The baskets are small. S$25 on Shopee. S$25 on TikTok Shop. These are frequent, low-value purchases. That is a volume business, and volume businesses end up competing on price.
The ground is moving under you. Lazada shrank by nearly a quarter in one year, while TikTok Shop grew by a quarter. Yet all three platforms combined grew just 4%. The pie is barely growing. The slices are being reshuffled.
If your whole business sits on one marketplace, that reshuffle is your risk, and you control none of it.
So use both, on purpose
This is where most advice goes wrong. Marketplaces are not the enemy. Your own store is not a vanity project. They do different jobs.
What marketplaces are good at
- Getting found by people who were not looking for you
- Moving volume on lower-priced, repeat-purchase items
- Testing whether a product sells at all, before you invest in it
What your own store is good at
- Telling the story that makes AI recommend you over a cheaper rival
- Owning the customer relationship: the email, the repeat order, the data
- Controlling the checkout, which is where trust is won or lost
- Selling the higher-value products a S$25 marketplace basket rarely carries
Marketplaces rent you an audience. Your store is the only part you own. Use the rented audience to build the owned one. We made the case for running both in why adding Shopee and Lazada can grow a Shopify brand, and covered the move in the other direction in our Shopee to Shopify guide.
What to do about it this quarter
- Find out what AI says about you. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to recommend a brand in your category in Singapore. Note whether you appear, and what they say. That is your starting point.
- Make your difference obvious. If your site does not plainly say what you do that others do not, AI has nothing distinctive to quote. “Quality products” is not a difference.
- Back up your claims. Specific, sourced facts get quoted. Vague ones get skipped.
- Test your own checkout on a phone. Buy something. Time it. Every extra step is a chance to lose a customer who took real effort to reach you.
- Put your best margin where you control the experience. Keep the volume lines on marketplaces. Sell the considered, higher-value products on your own store.
The short version
Singaporeans already shop with AI. AI wants to recommend distinctive brands, not cheap listings. It will send people to you, but it will not close the sale, and a single payment error puts that sale at risk. Marketplaces move volume at around S$25 a basket, and the platforms are shifting under your feet. Build on both. Own the part that is actually yours.
Want to know how your store holds up when AI sends a customer your way? See how we optimise Shopify stores or book an introductory call.
Keep reading
- Your customer asked ChatGPT before they asked you — a 30-minute test to see what AI tells Singapore shoppers about your store.
- Shopee, TikTok Shop or your own store? — a sorting test for deciding which products belong where.
Sources
- Adyen Index 2026 Singapore Retail Report. Commissioned by Adyen, conducted online by YouGov, March–April 2026. 1,041 Singaporean consumers aged 18+. Published July 2026. Source for all shopper AI-use and checkout figures.
- Cube, “E-commerce in Singapore”, June 2026, using the Cube Tradewinds Q4 2025 dataset. Source for marketplace GMV, growth and average order value. Covers physical-goods GMV on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop only, not total Singapore ecommerce. Cube notes its data is collected outside-in on a best-effort basis.
Jessica Bong
Jessica Bong is the founder of Soodo, a Singapore-based Shopify development and CRO agency. She built and scaled her own eCommerce brand before starting Soodo, and has since audited 60+ Shopify stores. Jessica also teaches eCommerce at Equinet Academy. Her hands-on experience running a live brand gives Soodo an edge most agencies lack.
