Would you be inclined to purchase from a little-known brand if a friend vouched for it? Many would at least entertain the idea. Now, picture that recommendation coming not from a friend, but from an AI agent acting on your behalf—having already compared prices, scrutinized reviews, ensured availability, and made an informed decision before you even accessed the app.
Accenture’s recent Consumer Pulse Research reveals that consumers are more advanced in their adoption of AI than many companies perceive. Over 75% of consumers reported that they would place more trust in a personal AI agent than in their closest friend to make purchase decisions for them. This highlights how rapidly trust in AI is evolving.
The Expanding Influence of AI in Purchasing Decisions
The acceptance of AI-assisted shopping is expanding rapidly, though the extent of control consumers are willing to relinquish varies significantly. Currently, 74% of consumers are open to AI agents managing tasks such as deal negotiations or complaint resolutions. Furthermore, 32% are willing to permit an AI agent to make the final purchasing decision on their behalf, as long as they confirm the payment within predetermined limits like price and preferences. Remarkably, 9% are comfortable with fully autonomous purchasing within set parameters, such as an AI agent handling a complete weekly grocery order—from selecting products to purchasing and even arranging for doorstep delivery.
The willingness to delegate depends largely on the perceived risk. Routine decisions—like comparing prices, negotiating deals, or resolving complaints—are easily entrusted to AI. However, decisions influenced by personal ethics, such as the sustainability or ethical production of a product, are not as readily relinquished. Payment remains a definitive boundary: consumers are far more inclined to delegate tasks leading up to checkout than the checkout process itself.
The Evolving Concept of Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty takes on new meaning
Brand loyalty is being quietly renegotiated. It is no longer a reliable, repeated choice — it is conditional, context-dependent, and increasingly mediated by algorithms. While more than half of consumers instruct AI which brands they prefer, preference alone is no guarantee of purchase. More than a third of behaviorally loyal consumers — those who typically stick to one or two preferred brands in a category — would let an AI agent override that loyalty for a better deal, a closer match, or a more available option. The implication is significant: historical loyalty is no longer a reliable moat.
For decades, brands earned loyalty through familiarity, emotional resonance, and memorable storytelling. Those assets still matter — but they are table stakes now, not differentiators. When an AI evaluates which brand to recommend, it weighs signals that are harder to fake: accurate product data, competitive pricing, reliable fulfillment, and verified reviews. A brand that tells a great story but can’t back it up with structured, machine-readable evidence may simply not make the shortlist.
The path forward
The rules of brand competition are being rewritten. Storytelling still shapes consumer preference, but performance now determines which brands AI agents actually choose. To stay competitive as this shift accelerates, retailers and brands need to get three things right:
- Become the consumer’s preferred brand, as well as the AI agent’s default. Being beloved by shoppers is no longer sufficient on its own. Brands must also show up in forms that AI agents can evaluate and act on. That might mean building a branded AI concierge — Adobe research finds that 43% of consumers would engage with a brand’s AI concierge if one were available. For others, the priority is simpler: make it easier for third-party agents to access clean, reliable product data, real-time pricing, and fulfillment details.
- Build brand connection and prove you can deliver. As AI takes over more routine purchasing, direct brand-to-consumer touchpoints will become rarer — but more consequential. Every interaction needs to earn its place. For retailers, this means surfacing the right product at the right moment and working closely with brand partners so that what’s on offer genuinely matches what consumers need.
- Stay present, even as the consumer journey gets mediated. The consumer journey increasingly begins before the consumer is even involved — an AI agent may have already narrowed the options by the time a human weighs in. Brands need to compete at that earlier stage. Building agentic engine optimization (AEO) capabilities alongside search engine optimization (SEO) ensures visibility at every decision point, including the ones happening without any human present.
The most important buyer in the room may soon not be human. As AI agents take on more of the shopping journey, brands face a new dual mandate: win the trust of consumers and the confidence of the algorithms acting on their behalf. The brands that figure out how to do both — staying emotionally compelling to people while remaining structurally legible to machines — will be the ones that endure.
