THE APEX TIMES
A Salesforce survey says nearly 20% of shoppers treat AI as their first stop before visiting stores and sites, with trust and accuracy becoming decisive for retailers heading into Cyber Week.
Holiday shopping for 2026 is increasingly beginning in front of an AI assistant rather than a product page. Salesforce said new proprietary research shows shoppers are using AI agents for price and product research, and that the behavior is already moving meaningful traffic toward ecommerce sites. The challenge for retailers is that, for now, shoppers are using AI as an advisor, not as a checkout replacement, leaving brands to prepare for a new type of incoming demand before they can convert it.
Salesforce’s research frames a typical “AI first” moment: a shopper asks an AI system to find the best price on an item, checks review indicates, and flags whether the item will arrive before a specific holiday cutoff date. After that, the shopper typically closes the app and completes the purchase themselves. In the company’s description, this pattern means retailers are not only competing for human attention, but also for the outputs generated by personal AI agents that may steer a customer toward or away from a brand.
Salesforce projected that AI is expected to drive $75.8 billion in Cyber Week spending in 2026, an increase of 13% from 2025. The company also estimated that AI-driven recommendations are likely to influence more than 1 in 5 holiday orders. In addition, Salesforce said traffic flowing to ecommerce sites from AI tools has more than doubled, up 104% year over year.
The company attributed these shifts to shopper behavior revealed in a Consumer Shopping survey conducted across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Among more than 2,500 shoppers surveyed, Salesforce said almost 20% report that AI is their first stop on the way to the store. Salesforce also said 74% of respondents trust the recommendations provided by AI, and that 30% of AI shoppers say these tools frequently introduce them to brands they did not know before.
Salesforce also highlighted the countervailing risk that AI guidance can stop a sale. According to the survey, 11% of shoppers say they would skip a purchase if an AI assistant advised against it. That suggests a retailer’s products can be negatively impacted by incorrect information fed into or generated by AI systems, ranging from availability to review summaries or delivery timing.
Salesforce executives framed the moment as a transition in how people shop, away from direct browsing and toward agent-assisted decisioning. “AI is no longer a niche tool just for tech-savvy shoppers,” said Caila Schwartz, Head of Agentic Commerce Shopper Insights at Salesforce. She said everyday shoppers are asking AI what to buy, where to buy it, and whether the purchase is worth the money before they land on a retailer’s site.
The company’s guidance for retailers centers on readiness for what it calls “nonhuman traffic” and on the reliability of product and pricing indicates that AI tools may use. As shoppers send personal agents to compare products and read reviews for them, retailers will need to make sure their websites can handle AI-driven visits without degrading the experience for human users. Salesforce also said retailers’ own shopper agents and product data need to be prepared for the kinds of detailed questions personal agents can ask.
Salesforce tied its recommendations to what it said retailers are seeing when they deploy their own shopper agents, describing an outcome of bigger orders and more loyal customers. However, Salesforce said shoppers have limited patience when AI gets things wrong, and that trust in AI is fragile. That balance between convenience and correctness may determine whether AI-assisted research accelerates purchases or leaves brands facing abandoned carts after an agent flags an issue.
Still, Salesforce did not provide breakdowns on how quickly shoppers might expand from research into AI-mediated checkout, nor did it specify which systems shoppers are using most often beyond the broad concept of personal AI agents. The company’s figures are also based on its survey and proprietary projections, which means independent confirmation and continued measurement will matter through the season. What is clear from Salesforce’s account is that retailers are entering Cyber Week with a new funnel: AI recommendation outputs that can either pull shoppers in or push them away before any human visit to the product page.
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