What's particularly noteworthy is RetailBrand First: How Retailers Win Hearts, Wallets & The AlgorithmByJill Standish, Contributor.
Furthermore, Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I examine how retailers can build resilient, responsible es.
AuthorJul 16, 2025, 05:53pm EDTJul 16, 2025, 07:49pm EDT Chatbot conversation Ai Artificial Intelligence nology online customer service, considering recent developments. Digital chatbot,.
More robot application, OpenAI generate (quite telling), given current economic conditions. Moreover, Futuristic nology (quite telling), given current economic conditions.
Virtual assistant on internet. Getty Showing up where your shoppers actually look has always been tough—and today it’s tougher.
Meanwhile, Isn’t what it used to be; you can’t rely on keywords, links, or banner noise to climb the results (noteworthy indeed).
Discovery now flows across engines, social s, retail media networks, marketplaces, and AI assistants that stitch signals together in real time (which is quite significant).
Additionally, In this AI‑curated path to purchase, retailers win by being smarter—not louder—through structured data, credible content, and a, consistent brand that shoppers trust and algorithms surface.
Generative AI enters the conversation Generative AI (gen AI) is reimagining the digital shopping experience by making the duct experience conversational, given current economic conditions.
Meanwhile, It used to be that consumers ed for a brand or a duct by using brand names, or information such as pricing to pull up results.
But now, they can ask for advice and recommendations, in today's market environment.
Accenture’s recently published Consumer Pulse Survey of more than 18,000 people across 14 countries, found that apximately half of consumers have made a purchase decision with the support of gen AI—making it the fastest-growing source of buying advice in the past year (noteworthy indeed), in today's market environment.
Additionally, And for active users— defined as people using gen AI tools at least weekly for personal and/or fessional reasons, it’s now the second highest source for duct recommendations after physical stores.
Conversely, The survey also found gen AI is no longer just a tool for speed and personalization—it’s becoming a confidant and trusted advisor.
Accenture’s survey found that more than one-third (36%) of active gen AI users now consider the nology “a good friend,” with a large portion (93%) relying on it for personal development advice and 1 in 10 calling it their most trusted source for purchase decisions (which is quite significant).
MORE FOR YOU When consumers trust AI as they would a close friend, every interaction becomes an opportunity to deepen—or lose—that relationship, in light of current trends.
Personalized recommendations A great example of tapping AI to deeper consumer relationships is AI-powered multi-brand beauty startup, Noli, founded and backed by the L'Oréal Groupe.
Noli—which stands for (No One I’)—is on a mission to empower every beauty consumer with their own intelligent, trusted advisor, in light of current trends.
Nevertheless, Noli is reinventing how people discover and shop beauty ducts by addressing the number one pain point for beauty customers—too many options, and lack of unbiased, often conflicting, advice in the market.
Nevertheless, Noli cuts through the beauty noise with AI diagnostics trained on 1M+ skin data points and thousands of duct formulations, given the current landscape.
It decodes each user’s beauty file and ders confident duct picks to their door.
Co‑Founder & CEO Amos Susskind says, “Beauty is full of choice, opinions, claims, noise, and emotional stakes, making it the perfect category for personalization and expert guidance.
” Master the large language model ecosystem It's easy to see how large language models (LLMs) are fast becoming the new influencers.
According to Accenture’s survey consumers are already using gen AI to inform purchase decisions, making it the fastest-growing source for recommendations.
Furthermore, To avoid being misrepresented, or excluded from consumer consideration entirely, retailers need to take an active role in the LLM ecosystem – a network of models, platforms, and data sources, in light of current trends.
Furthermore, Winning now means optimizing for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as well as classic SEO—because AI assistants don’t crawl, index, and rank traditional ; they synthesize, summarize, and represent your brand, amid market uncertainty.
Nevertheless, Them structured, high‑quality, rights‑ed content that’s current and consistent; refresh it often; tag it so context is ; and monitor AI surfaces to correct drift.
Do that, and your brand story shows up accurately—and gets —across AI chats, agents, and shoppable answers.
However, Prepare for Agentic Personal Shoppers Then there’s the newer member of the AI family, agentic AI, a nology that can act autonomously on behalf of consumers—making purchases without the traditional shopping journey.
Furthermore, In fact, 75% of consumers told Accenture they are open to using a trusted AI-powered personal shopper that understands their needs.
When shoppers delegate decisions to agentic shopping agents, AI effectively becomes the buyer of record.
Traditional retail media—banner ads, paid slots, even your website—can be skipped as agents source the “best fit” directly from data s, reviews, inventory, and price APIs.
That’s the threat: a frictionless race to the lowest acceptable price. The opportunity.
Make sure your brand carries machine‑readable reasons to choose you—quality signals, experience benefits, sustainability creds, fit/usage guidance, service guarantees—that matter to humans and to their agents.
On the other hand, At the same time, Give AI more to weigh than price, and you stay in the basket.
Additionally, Furthermore, The trust imperative Consumers are sceptical: 41% say AI content can feel inauthentic and 45% say it lacks a human touch (Accenture).
Nevertheless, Trust hinges on transparent, consent‑based data use—shoppers are used to tuning their own recommendation s and don’t want their data repurposed in ways that surprise them.
Tect that trust with strong cybersecurity and data governance. Keep humans in the loop so AI reflects brand values and ders the service customers expect.
However, The win: AI experiences that are personal and trustworthy sustained by investment in, training, and teams that keep great retail brands real.
This analysis suggests that time to act is now The investments retailers and brands make today will determine whether they remain visible, relevant, and indispensable in an AI-driven world of tomorrow.
While some retailers debate whether to embrace AI, others are already reshaping the industry by using AI to become more empathetic, more responsive, and more valuable to consumers than ever before.
But they'll do so while maintaining the human touch—be that the store associate or customer service agent—that makes brands memorable and meaningful.
The question is: will your brand be among them (fascinating analysis). Editorial StandardsRes & PermissionsLOADING PLAYER.