Which E-Commerce Brands Do AI Assistants Recommend in Turkey?

Turkey’s e-commerce market continues to grow, having exceeded TRY 4.57 trillion in 2025 and expected to exceed TRY 5 trillion by the end of 2026. At the same time, AI assistants are playing an increasingly significant role in consumers’ shopping journeys. Narron, an İTÜ Çekirdek startup and a pioneering Brand Intelligence Platform in Turkey and internationally, focuses on this transformation by helping brands manage their perception and visibility across the AI ecosystem. Its “Narron Turkey E-Commerce Sector AI Visibility Index” examines how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity evaluate e-commerce brands in Turkey.

Over the past 20 years of digital marketing, brands have competed fiercely for visibility in search engines. Today, consumer behaviour has entered a new era. Users now ask questions such as “What is the best online shopping site?”, “Which is the best platform for buying electronics in Turkey?” and “Which site should I choose for online grocery shopping?” directly of AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. These applications are becoming new opinion leaders in product and brand discovery, and consumers’ first encounters with brands are taking place through these channels. For brands, this shift makes it critical not only to appear in search engines but also to be among the brands AI recommends. As AI-powered recommendations become increasingly influential in purchasing journeys, brands face both a new area of performance and a new layer of perception to manage.

Against this backdrop, Narron — a pioneering Brand Intelligence Platform in Turkey and internationally that enables brands to manage their perception, positioning, product and category positioning, recommendation performance and competitive visibility across the AI ecosystem — has published its “Turkey E-Commerce Sector AI Visibility Index”.

Developed by Narron, an İTÜ Çekirdek startup founded by public relations leaders and AI engineers and operating in Turkey and the Netherlands, the index analyses the e-commerce sector’s visibility across the AI ecosystem. The research examined 99 brands representing Turkey’s e-commerce ecosystem through 50 different unbranded queries reflecting consumers’ real shopping behaviour. Each question was run three times on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, producing a total of 600 AI responses for analysis. The index reveals which brands stand out when consumers ask AI platforms for shopping advice, how AI perceives Turkey’s e-commerce market, and which brands it recommends in each category.

The shared leader in e-commerce: Trendyol

According to the research, the four AI platforms produce a largely similar visibility map of Turkey’s e-commerce market. Trendyol ranks first with an average AI Visibility (Share of Voice) of 17.52%, followed by Hepsiburada at 14.96%. The top four brands — Trendyol, Hepsiburada, n11 and Amazon Turkey — account for approximately half of all AI recommendations. This suggests that generative AI largely defines Turkey’s e-commerce market through the same leading players.

ChatGPT favours market leaders, while Perplexity highlights category specialists

The research also reveals that AI platforms interpret the same e-commerce market from different perspectives. ChatGPT recommends market leaders such as Trendyol and Hepsiburada more frequently, while Perplexity’s broad web-search capabilities give greater visibility to category specialists such as Boyner, LC Waikiki and Çiçeksepeti.

The category-level findings are also notable. Teknosa and MediaMarkt Turkey in electronics; ebebek in mother and baby; Watsons Turkey, Gratis, Rossmann and Sephora Turkey in cosmetics; and Çiçeksepeti in gifts are among the brands most frequently recommended by AI. In modest fashion, boutique specialists stand out ahead of large marketplaces. In second-hand shopping, letgo leads in overall visibility, while Sahibinden falls behind specialists such as EasyCep on vertical queries, particularly those concerning second-hand phones.

The research indicates that AI rewards category authority, content depth and digital trust signals more than brand size. This finding points to the need for brands to develop perception and visibility strategies across the entire generative AI ecosystem, rather than focusing on a single platform.

32 brands remain outside AI’s radar

One of the study’s most striking findings is that 32 of the 99 brands analysed were almost never recommended in AI responses. This suggests that strong brand awareness alone is no longer sufficient: reliable digital content, category authority and visibility in the sources AI references are becoming increasingly critical.

AI visibility is a new performance metric for brands

According to Narron, generative AI is creating a new decision layer in consumers’ purchasing journeys. Competition for brands is therefore no longer limited to SEO performance or e-commerce traffic. Which brands AI recommends, the contexts in which it positions them, and the sources it draws on are becoming new indicators of digital competition.

AI Visibility is poised to become one of the core metrics directly influencing e-commerce brands’ growth, consumer preference and digital performance in the years ahead.

For the full details of the research, contact Narron.

About Narron

Developed in Turkey and the Netherlands, Narron is a pioneering AI-focused Brand Intelligence Platform that turns brand intelligence into action. It brings a brand’s strategy, positioning, products, competitors and stakeholders together in a shared knowledge base. Through Shield, it aims to identify opportunities and risks in brand and category developments; through PR Factory, to carry out communications and marketing activities with human approval; and through Lens, to measure brands’ visibility and perception across AI platforms. Lens, available today as a paid product, analyses in detail how AI describes brands, which attributes it associates with them and how frequently it recommends them, providing insights to help brands improve.

Narron — Intelligence that moves brands.