AI Accelerating the Path to Purchase

Phil Benton:

In 2026, one of the key trends that I see in digital commerce is the continuing rise of AI in product discovery. We know that AI in product discovery is a proven use case. We've seen Walmart with their AI system, Sparky or Amazon with Rufus already achieving success. And in fact, Zalando with their recent good results attributed some of that to their AI-driven product discovery phase. And what's more, consumers want it. We know that over 90% of consumers say they expect sites to be able to interpret their natural language search. So the trend to embed AI in product discovery is set to continue strongly and not just in discovery, going all the way through to checkout. So 21% of Walmart's referral traffic and about 20% of Etsy's referral traffic comes from ChatGPT. So it's no surprise that those experiences are being integrated into ChatGPT. Initially just for Stripe and Etsy in North America, but that's a trend that we will see continue in different geographies and with different retailers to give that in-chat experience, buying experience. So AI product discovery, AI in the customer journey is set to continue and winners will be those that are able to embed AI in the journey now to give consumers the seamless experience that they expect.