Dive Brief
- Three-quarters of consumers who research products and brands with AI say they use its recommendations to expand the number of companies they consider, according to a Net Conversion survey of 1,500 U.S. consumers released last week.
- Overall, just over half of consumers — 54% — “sometimes” use AI tools to help in their searches for products or services. AI usage peaks among those under the age of 40.
- Two in five AI-using shoppers said AI is extremely helpful for discovering new brands or getting ideas. Once options are presented, consumers say the technology is most helpful to compare features or pros and cons, find answers to their questions about a brand, and summarize customer reviews.
Dive Insight
As customers increasingly use AI for discovery, brands risk AI agents becoming the middle man in the customer-brand relationship.
AI-powered tools only surface what’s extant on the internet, so brands must ensure that their product information is accurate and current. But, this is perhaps the first defensive move in a longer game that may well see AI agents take the field and disrupt direct customer-brand relationships.
“Today, the dominant use cases remain discovery, comparison and recommendation,” Bill Staikos, founder of Be Customer Led, told CX Dive in an email. “But this isn't the destination. The recent launch of Meta's Muse and similar agents are beginning to cross the line from helping consumers decide to actually executing their decisions.”
Net Conversion’s survey did not specifically touch on the use of AI agents as a consumer’s personal buyer.
But, the survey did find that consumers are currently unwilling to hand decision-making over to AI. Only 2% of respondents said they’d trust AI to take actions like fill their cart or book a reservation. Similarly, a recent ACI Worldwide survey found that only 7% of fashion and sportswear consumers said they would allow an AI assistant to make purchases without approval.
At the moment, the trust isn’t fully there. Half of respondents said they verify in some manner: 22% use AI for curated guidance but verify the suggestions and 29% use it for basic assistance but heavily double-check the details.
But should that trust increase and consumer dependence on AI grow, brands may find themselves knowing less and less about their customers and, perhaps, be eventually displaced by use of AI agents.
“If my agent knows what brands I like, my budget, previous purchases, sizing, dietary restrictions, delivery preferences, return tolerance and what I value, I may increasingly tell it ‘Get me what I need,’” Staikos said. “This puts the brand at arm's length from the consumer. And the agent will have a richer understanding of the customer than any individual brand ever could.”
To mitigate against this potentiality, CX leaders should define the unique value their brand provides and understand what AI is saying about them, Staikos said. This could help insulate them from consumers using AI just to find the best deal.
“For more than 20 years, brands have invested enormous amounts of money removing intermediaries and building direct digital relationships with customers,” Staikos said. “AI agents put an intermediary back in the middle, and this time the intermediary is actually employed by the customer.
