Study Finds One in Three Shoppers Is Open to AI Gift Ideas This Holiday Season

More than one-third of U.S. consumers are very or extremely willing to use an AI tool or chatbot for holiday gift recommendations, according to a Gartner survey. The results suggest AI is emerging as a stop on the path to purchase, one that could influence which products shoppers consider before they ever reach a retailer’s website.

Even though consumers are interested in AI, they are not giving up their previous shopping habits. According to Gartner, retailer websites, traditional internet searches, and friends’ and family wish lists are still the most frequently used sources of inspiration for holiday shopping. Stores and Amazon are still expected to be the main places for making purchases, with 77% of consumers intending to shop in stores and 75% planning to buy things on Amazon.

The more significant figure is the number of sources that people who use AI consult. Shoppers who currently make use of AI tools to get holiday ideas look at an average of 4.48 sources, whereas those who don’t do so look at 3.24. People using AI are doing more research, not less.

As Emily Weiss, a senior principal analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, pointed out, “AI is beginning to establish a role in the holiday shopping journey, but it is not replacing the channels consumers already use. Consumers who use AI for holiday shopping are also consulting a wider range of other sources, meaning marketers should prepare for more fragmented discovery journeys.”

The Gartner results support previous research from this year. As From Day One reported in August, Adobe discovered that 86% of consumers use AI when shopping, and the National Retail Federation found that 61% of back-to-school shoppers were using AI tools to look for prices, discounts, recommendations, and ideas.

Shoppers also appear to want to stay in control of the final purchase. Adobe’s Vivek Pandya said consumers were comfortable going back and forth with an AI agent, then returning through paid search or social media to buy “with more confidence.”

Weiss warned that AI should not be regarded as a separate and self-contained channel. “Marketers should not treat AI shopping tools as a standalone channel,” she said. “Consumers are layering AI onto existing shopping behaviors, making an already fragmented discovery journey even more complex.”

She said products should be easy to discover and evaluate across AI tools, search, retailer websites, marketplaces, and stores. In practice, that means product information, pricing, and availability must be consistent across all platforms, so that AI doesn’t confuse shoppers with conflicting details.

The lesson for this holiday season is that one third of shoppers being open to AI recommendations doesn’t mean that one third of the budget will go to AI recommendations. It means that brands now have one more place where they need to provide accurate information, just as they do in all the other places.

Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, editor, artist, and former journalist and librarian. She holds a Master of Library & Information Science (MLIS) and has nearly a decade of experience writing both full time and as a freelancer. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.

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