AI recommendations reshape UK shopping but not spending

Research published by Vercel and the World Retail Congress suggests AI recommendations are increasingly shaping where many UK consumers shop, though not yet driving higher spending.

More than half of UK shoppers surveyed said they had bought a product after an AI recommendation, while 87% found AI-powered product recommendations useful. The study also found that 51% already use AI to compare prices before buying.

Discovery is one of the clearest areas of change. One in five UK consumers now begin their shopping journey on AI-powered search platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, putting those tools ahead of Facebook, TikTok and Instagram for retail discovery.

Yet the data also points to limits on that influence. While 31% of UK consumers said they would spend more with a retailer offering the latest AI features, only 10% said they were likely to spend more with an AI shopping assistant than with a human customer service agent.

Across the UK and Europe, shoppers still favour established channels for important purchases. In the UK, 79% said they start their shopping journey directly on a retailer's website, while 65% prefer to complete high-value purchases in physical stores rather than online or through AI platforms.

Human support also remains important to trust and conversion. Almost half of respondents, or 47%, said they would rather deal with a human customer service agent than a chatbot, while 57% said they would spend less or not at all if served only by an AI assistant rather than a human.

Shift in discovery

The results indicate that AI is becoming more important in the early stages of shopping, particularly in helping consumers narrow options, compare prices and find products. Retailers may therefore need to consider how product information appears not only on conventional websites and search engines, but also within AI-driven tools that increasingly mediate discovery.

Malte Ubl, Chief Technology Officer at Vercel, said: "For most of the web's history, we optimised storefronts for two audiences: people and Google. There's now a third: AI agents that discover, compare, and increasingly recommend products on a shopper's behalf. The retailers who win the next decade will be the ones who can iterate and ship quickly enough to keep up with how fast this consumer behaviour is moving."

The research suggests consumers are open to AI when it solves practical shopping problems rather than replacing existing channels. Some 43% said they would choose one retailer over another because it offered better AI-powered experiences.

Personalised product recommendations were the most widely used AI feature on retailer websites, cited by 58% of respondents. Shoppers also signalled interest in more natural interactions, with 42% of UK consumers saying they want more human-like AI customer service and chatbot experiences.

Visual search is another area of demand. A third of UK shoppers, or 33%, said they want to use visual search more often, allowing them to find products by uploading or taking a photo instead of typing a text query.

Trust concerns

Even so, trust, privacy and transparency remain substantial barriers. One in three UK consumers, or 33%, said they worry AI may not be showing the best products, either because recommendations are inaccurate or because they are shaped by commercial priorities.

Data handling is another source of concern. More than a third of respondents, or 36%, said they are not ready to share personal data because of privacy worries, while 27% said they would share data but wanted greater clarity on how it would be used.

That mix of interest and caution leaves retailers with a balancing act. The findings indicate that investment in AI-assisted shopping may help attract customers and influence product choice, but it does not remove the need for retailer websites, stores and human staff, particularly for expensive or more considered purchases.

The survey covered 4,000 European consumers, including 1,350 in the UK, with additional respondents from Germany, Southern Europe and the Nordics. In the UK sample, the broad pattern was consistent: shoppers are increasingly willing to use AI as a tool, but many are not yet prepared to treat it as a substitute for trusted human advice.

For retail groups, that means AI may be becoming part of the route to purchase without yet becoming the main driver of basket size. The strongest signal from the study is that consumers are changing how they discover products, even as spending decisions continue to rest on familiar channels and personal reassurance.

One of the clearest findings was that only around one in ten consumers said they would spend more when assisted by AI.