Taobao Flash Sale Executive Says E-Commerce Apps Lack AI, Suppressing User Needs

At the opening of the 2026 China Internet Conference, Jia Jie, Senior Vice President of Taobao Flash Sales and Head of the Supercomputing Team, delivered a keynote speech identifying a key pain point in e-commerce and instant retail. He noted that most e-commerce and instant retail apps still lack native AI interaction capabilities, forcing users to rely on short product keywords for search. Complex, scenario-based consumer needs cannot be fully expressed, suppressing genuine demand.
Jia Jie began by clarifying the essential differences between instant retail and traditional retail, summarizing its three core elements: instant demand, instant fulfillment, and localized supply. Consumer demand is highly time-sensitive—examples include ordering meals on the spot, buying groceries, or purchasing emergency medicine—with most people expecting delivery within 30 to 60 minutes. Product supply is concentrated within a 3- to 5-kilometer radius around users, emphasizing nearby delivery and greatly improving overall convenience.
The "bottleneck" of the search box in a trillion-dollar market
Data shows the instant retail industry is growing rapidly: the market size reached 780 billion yuan in 2024 and exceeded 1 trillion yuan in 2025. The Ministry of Commerce predicts it will surpass 2 trillion yuan by 2030. However, as the scale grows, the limitations of the traditional interaction model become more apparent. Users want more than just "a bottle of soy sauce" or "a bag of rice"—but when the search box only accepts keywords, complex real-life needs like "Tonight my friends are coming over for hot pot, help me prepare all the ingredients, with a budget of 200 yuan, and one person doesn't eat spicy food" cannot be expressed at all.
In Jia Jie's view, this experience gap—"wanting to say but not being able to express"—is precisely the next breakthrough for the instant retail industry. AI should not be merely a Q&A robot embedded in the app, but rather a service carrier capable of fully understanding complex scenario-based needs and automatically completing orders.
Partnering with Qwen to launch an intelligent agent, AI orders exceeded 100 million in a week
Taobao Flash Sales has taken the lead. During this year's Spring Festival, it partnered with Tongyi Qianwen to launch a dedicated intelligent agent for instant retail, supporting natural language dialogue for placing orders. Within just one week of its launch, AI orders exceeded 100 million. The order data shows that user demand has shifted significantly—users are no longer limited to simple product keywords but have generated a large number of complex demands with constraints.
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At the opening of the 2026 China Internet Conference, Jia Jie, Senior Vice President of Taobao Flash Sales and Head of the Supercomputing Team, delivered a keynote speech identifying a key pain point in e-commerce and instant retail. He noted that most e-commerce and instant retail apps still lack native AI interaction capabilities, forcing users to rely on short product keywords for search. Complex, scenario-based consumer needs cannot be fully expressed, suppressing genuine demand.
Jia Jie began by clarifying the essential differences between instant retail and traditional retail, summarizing its three core elements: instant demand, instant fulfillment, and localized supply. Consumer demand is highly time-sensitive—examples include ordering meals on the spot, buying groceries, or purchasing emergency medicine—with most people expecting delivery within 30 to 60 minutes. Product supply is concentrated within a 3- to 5-kilometer radius around users, emphasizing nearby delivery and greatly improving overall convenience.
The "bottleneck" of the search box in a trillion-dollar market
Data shows the instant retail industry is growing rapidly: the market size reached 780 billion yuan in 2024 and exceeded 1 trillion yuan in 2025. The Ministry of Commerce predicts it will surpass 2 trillion yuan by 2030. However, as the scale grows, the limitations of the traditional interaction model become more apparent. Users want more than just "a bottle of soy sauce" or "a bag of rice"—but when the search box only accepts keywords, complex real-life needs like "Tonight my friends are coming over for hot pot, help me prepare all the ingredients, with a budget of 200 yuan, and one person doesn't eat spicy food" cannot be expressed at all.
In Jia Jie's view, this experience gap—"wanting to say but not being able to express"—is precisely the next breakthrough for the instant retail industry. AI should not be merely a Q&A robot embedded in the app, but rather a service carrier capable of fully understanding complex scenario-based needs and automatically completing orders.
Partnering with Qwen to launch an intelligent agent, AI orders exceeded 100 million in a week
Taobao Flash Sales has taken the lead. During this year's Spring Festival, it partnered with Tongyi Qianwen to launch a dedicated intelligent agent for instant retail, supporting natural language dialogue for placing orders. Within just one week of its launch, AI orders exceeded 100 million. The order data shows that user demand has shifted significantly—users are no longer limited to simple product keywords but have generated a large number of complex demands with constraints.
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