What to buy Dad for Christmas': is retail ready for the AI shopping shift?

"While traditional internet search, social media especially TikTok and Instagram and simply wandering a local high street will still be the main routes to presents for most this year, about a quarter of people in the UK are already using AI to find the right products, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. For brands appealing to younger people, the revolution is well under way: the rival advisory firm KPMG says as many as 30% of shoppers aged 25-34 are using AI to find products,"

"Asking a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT or Gemini what you should get your father-in-law rather than typing whisky or socks into Google or DuckDuckGo may seem a small change in habits. However, it marks a sea change for retailers accustomed to paying search engines to promote their listings. LLMs allow users to ask questions in conversational language, perhaps by speaking into their computer or phone."

"The chatbots produce their responses by scraping the internet and inbuilt datasets for relevant information, with some sources given more trusted status than others. Companies large and small are scrambling to adapt to this new world where the keywords and advertising deals previously central to web marketing hold less importance than the reviewers' opinions, accurate availability information and product details read by LLMs such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Meta's Llama."

Many shoppers are using AI to find gifts, with roughly a quarter of UK consumers and up to 30% of 25–34-year-olds using generative models, compared with 1% of those over 65. Large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Llama respond to conversational queries and offer specific product recommendations rather than lists of links. These systems scrape internet and internal datasets, prioritizing some sources over others. Retailers face a shift away from keyword-driven paid search toward factors such as reviewer opinions, accurate availability and detailed product information that LLMs consume. Companies are adapting to this new landscape.

Read at www.theguardian.com