Shopping’s New First Step: Agentic Search Grows 200% as Purchase Journeys Start in AI Chats
Agentic search now begins 200% more shopping journeys than last year, reshaping how consumers discover products and forcing retailers to prioritize AI adoption despite infrastructure and measurement challenges.
Retailers report that 86% of commerce leaders believe AI is raising customer expectations while their teams face pressure to meet those standards with fewer resources. Implementing or expanding AI has become the top priority for the coming year, though it is also seen as the greatest anticipated challenge. The shift reflects a broader transformation in how commerce teams operate, from merchandising to fulfillment, driven by the rapid adoption of AI tools by consumers. Companies that successfully integrate AI are positioning themselves to keep pace with evolving shopping behaviors.
Traffic from AI chat referrals surged between 150% and 428% year over year across every quarter measured, while overall traffic grew only modestly. Consumers increasingly discover products through AI assistants, social media AI, and delivery apps rather than traditional search or brand-owned properties. Between August 2025 and May 2026, product discovery via brand-owned channels fell 7%, while traditional search declined 15%. Meanwhile, discovery through new AI-driven channels grew 38%, signaling a fundamental shift in how shoppers begin their purchasing journeys.
Commerce leaders anticipate that large language models will become essential for product discovery within the next year. Organizations are responding by improving product content quality, optimizing for conversational queries, and submitting data feeds to AI search platforms. The focus is on ensuring products appear in AI-generated responses, such as when a shopper asks for a specific item under a set price. Despite this urgency, fewer than a third of organizations currently use agentic AI, though nearly half of non-adopters plan to deploy within six months.
Among organizations already using agentic AI, the experimental phase has largely concluded, with most scaling AI across functions like service, IT, and merchandising. Adopters report improvements in customer satisfaction, personalization, operational efficiency, and employee productivity. However, only 32% have fully defined AI success metrics, highlighting a gap between adoption and measurable outcomes. The push to scale AI is occurring amid fragmented customer data and disjointed systems, complicating implementation. Meanwhile, 77% of consumers still prefer physical stores for holiday shopping, yet 79% use their phones in-store and 12% consult AI assistants while shopping.