There may be an artificial intelligence that will thank you for your Christmas present this year.
From technology to retail, companies are going all-in on AI this year, and it looks like consumers are following suit. This holiday season, shoppers are turning to AI to help them find and buy gifts.
Create AI agents through the Agentforce platform New data from Salesforce shows that in the week leading up to Cyber Monday in the U.S., 17% of online orders at retail partners were facilitated by AI agents. AI agents drove $13.5 billion in sales that week.
AI can help guide customers to a wider range of transactions and checkouts. According to Salesforce, the use of AI, including platforms like ChatGPT, tripled from 2024 during Cyber Weekend.
These statistics show that retailers’ AI investments, from partnering with AI companies to developing their own chatbots, are paying off in the run-up to Christmas.
“AI improves shopper efficiency by allowing consumers to bypass the traditional home page and go directly to the product page they are looking for,” said Lori Nickett, director of data storytelling at digital analytics firm Quantum Metric.
For retailers, this means a major shift from strategies they have traditionally relied on, such as homepages and social media.
Consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, up 9.1% from a year earlier, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks customer data from websites and apps. For example, shoppers used chat services to find deals and compare products during their shopping holidays. The analytics firm found that AI makes the shopping experience more personalized and increases brand discovery through product recommendations.
On Black Friday, shoppers who visited U.S. retail sites through an AI chat service were 38% more likely to make a purchase than non-AI traffic sources, an Adobe study found.
To prepare for the holiday shopping rush, several major retailers are deploying generative AI chatbots or entering into new AI partnerships. Target has rolled out a festive AI shopping assistant that provides gift suggestions based on user input.
Quantum Metric found that shoppers primarily use AI to find the best deals.
“AI tools are not changing what consumers buy. Rather, AI tools are changing how consumers make purchasing decisions,” Nickett told Business Insider.
