Create awareness, foster engagement, transform experiences, and cultivate loyalty.
Flexible, cutting-edge technology that transforms experiences and drives loyalty.
Loyalty without limits. Powering personalized experiences that build brand love and transform customers into loyal advocates.
Revolutionizing how companies engage with their audiences by sparking participation to drive growth.
Lauren Sutherland with Vince DiGirolamo [Mintel]
Today’s retail landscape leverages a sophisticated combination of predictive, generative, and agentic AI. Its current applications span the entire customer journey, from AI-generated ad campaigns and product recommendations to AI-powered search, review summaries, and customer service.
While a marketing model might employ predictive AI to identify customers at risk of abandonment, generative AI creates personalized messaging to re-engage them. A more recent evolution, agentic AI leverages a combination of predictive and generative AI to independently perform actions on consumers’ behalf (e.g., building a shopping cart based on past behavior, anticipated needs, and available stock when prompted). These applications are already reshaping how consumers discover and purchase products.
Seventy-two percent of consumers believe that AI will change the future of shopping. However, as with all new technology, there is friction. Current pain points include accuracy issues, particularly related to complex problems, and some consumers’ preference for people and human accountability. Trust barriers also persist, particularly around transparency in decision-making processes, and implementation challenges continue to create consumer resistance and delayed adoption.
Mintel found that while 40% of consumers trust AI for educational support, 36% for travel planning, and 35% for fitness guidance, less than 25% trust AI for financial advice or investment decisions. Consumers are skeptical of AI when it feels forced on them, reporting they value transparency, human fallback options, and responsible AI use. Trust grows when AI is positioned as a supportive tool rather than a replacement.
However, there is still high use and appetite for AI-enhanced experiences. According to Mintel, more than 40% of consumers feel optimistic about AI’s influence on retail. As more companies integrate AI-features into their shopping experience, and clearly communicate the benefits, consumer adoption will continue to increase. Sixty-one percent of U.S. adults have used AI in the past six months and 31% of them (19% of the U.S. population) report interacting with AI daily. When asked how AI improves their customer experience, respondents most often selected “product comparison shopping (e.g., help selecting similar products by nutritional labels or ingredients)” and “virtual shopping assistants (e.g., personalized product recommendations in real time).”
Despite Gen Z leading in overall AI adoption at 76%, with 85% of students using it (the highest of any demographic group), Millennials show the highest daily usage at 24%. Seventy-nine percent of parents report using AI daily, nearly twice as often as non-parents, for tasks like childcare planning, understanding new topics, and organizing notes. While younger generational cohorts leverage AI the most, adoption spans all age groups. Nearly 60% of Gen X and half of Baby Boomers have used AI in the last six months, and 19% and 11%, respectively, report being daily users.
It’s important to acknowledge a growing trend of younger consumers seeking digital detoxes. Research from Harris Poll and Quad found 81% of Gen Z wishing it was easier to disconnect from digital devices. With so much of their lives spent online, from school to work, this isn’t surprising. Considering that more than 80% of people shop in-store and 86% of Gen Z and Millennials state that physically touching products is “essential” to their purchase decisions, brands must consider how to leverage AI effectively across digital and physical touchpoints.
Culturally, consumers and brands alike are tapping into nostalgia and anemoia (nostalgia for an era you didn’t live through). Throwback, immersive campaigns like Miller High Life’s beer-infused vinyl record that plays 25 minutes of authentic dive-bar ambience tap into emotional connection. It’s a tangible, thoughtful way to engage with the brand that is part of a larger campaign that includes a partnership with “Champagne of Beers” fan Teddy Swims, limited-time Fender-inspired merch, and chances to win Teddy Swims concert tickets and custom Fender guitars.
Marketers use AI to varying degrees across campaign development, including versioning at the top of the funnel. But to ensure strategies keep customers at the core and deliver experiences that resonate, brands must focus on leveraging AI in ways that align with customers’ wants and needs. Research shows consumers would like brands to improve the use of AI in customer service, such as addressing pain points by simplifying returns, enhancing loyalty programs, and tracking deliveries.
“When it comes to how and where consumers shop, retailers must understand that consumers’ preference for omnichannel shopping is not only about where the final purchase takes place. This also includes the features and offerings that are part of the shopping process. As such, AI-features must be complementary to the in-person and human-supported features of the shopping experience,” says Vince DiGirolamo, Director, Retail & eCommerce Reports at Mintel.
The evolution from AI-as-copilot to AI-as-decision-maker currently represents the most significant shift in retail technology. We expect agentic AI to excel in routine, functional purchases like diapers, dog food, and household staples. In-store, AI enables customers to scan shelves, quickly pull up reviews, and see prices elsewhere, powering more informed purchase decisions. In addition, AI enables AR tools to simulate “visual try-ons” that match optimal colors with consumers’ skin tone, hair, and body type—in-app and in-store. However, purchases such as clothing and makeup will likely remain human-driven as many consumers find satisfaction in the discovery and selection experience.
The search process has become increasingly fragmented. Consumers start searches on social and online marketplaces, which may have their own chatbots in addition to typical search engines. It remains to be seen what impact agentic AI will have on the search and discovery phases, but it appears it will be significant. The Pew Research Center found that “when Google presented consumers with AI summary results, those users clicked on a search results link on 8% of all visits, compared with 15% of consumers who clicked on a search results link when there was no AI summary at the top,” and “26% of Google users who saw an AI summary ended their browsing session on that page, compared with 16% of Google users who ended their search and didn’t see an AI summary.”
With the decline of organic search traffic, SEO strategies alone become less effective, and marketers are having to quickly evolve. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) strategies are becoming increasingly important to ensure brand content is relevant enough to show up in chatbot responses and AI summaries. While eMarketer predicts “only about one billion [dollars] will be spent on AI search ad spending in the U.S. this year,” it expects that number to “skyrocket to 26 billion by 2029.”
Brands should prepare for a retail future where routine purchases become fully automated while experiential shopping becomes more immersive, enhanced by AI. Success will require balancing automation efficiency with the human elements that drive emotional connection and brand loyalty in a way that makes the most sense for your brand, products, and customers.
Retailers who will thrive are those that use AI to enhance rather than replace human judgment, while creating quality content and seamless experiences that facilitate online and in-store discovery. Here’s how we recommend retailers to invest their AI dollars:
