If you thought you’d had just about enough of the AI chatter, well, it’s only just beginning.
According to the State of E-Commerce report by Shopify and search and product discovery platform Constructor, about 64% of consumers have used some form of generative AI in their everyday lives. The figure marks a significant increase from last year (51%).
The study—which included responses from 1,500 consumers across the US, UK, and Germany—also found that nearly 6 in 10 shoppers are either “very or somewhat comfortable” using GenAI on a retailer’s website.
Not only that, but consumers in some areas are more reliant on AI than, well, people. For instance, nearly 1 in 5 shoppers said that they trust AI over partners when it comes to picking gifts, while 26% of those surveyed said that “an algorithm that’s seen their browsing and purchase history is likely to get their taste right.”
“There are definitely a lot of especially younger generations that do trust AI quite a bit to make those sorts of decisions, because they are viewed as impartial in some way, and they’re not necessarily trying to sell something,” Nate Roy, strategic director of e-commerce innovation at Constructor, told Retail Brew, adding that the tech allows retailers to use customized agents on their site to deliver a similar experience.
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While that might be true, data indicates that many retailers aren’t quite providing that personalized level of shopping experience just yet: 68% of shoppers believe that retail website searches are in need of an upgrade, while 42% reported they “always or frequently have to reformulate” their questions to make the search engine understand what they need.
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Interestingly, a lot of the unfulfilled shopping experience is not limited to retail websites but also shoppers’ preferred brands or sites.
More than 4 in 10 consumers said their favorite retail site “treats them like strangers” on their favorite retail website, often being recommended irrelevant items despite their shopping history.
Likewise, 50% of shoppers said while search results often were “technically” accurate in response to their questions, they did not show products customers would actually be interested in purchasing. For a significant portion of those surveyed, this has often led to considerable frustration, with 47% saying they left a retailer’s website because of a disappointing discovery and search experience.
Meanwhile, 44% of shoppers said they’d go to an altogether different brand to shop when disappointed with search results. “One-to-one personalization has not existed for that long, and the biggest thing that it requires to get right is a lot of data and to be tracking what we call clickstream, [which comprises] all of the unique behaviors of someone visiting a website,” Roy said. “And you can use that information as early as the first session to start personalizing and start understanding someone.”