---
title: AI Now Steers About a Third of Shoppers, Often Toward Brands They Had Not Considered
description: About a third of consumers now use AI to shop, and it often points them to brands they had not considered. Discovery is moving inside the AI's answer.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
updated: 2026-08-26T07:17:11.558Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ai-shopping-discovery-brands-bcg
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/ai-shopping-brand-discovery-208835.webp
categories: Artificial Intelligence
content_type: Analysis
region: Global
publication: Sovereign Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

For years the contest for a shopper's attention played out on a search results page, a store shelf, or a review site the buyer chose to visit. A growing share of that decision now happens inside a conversation with an AI assistant, and the assistant often points the buyer toward a company they had not been weighing. BCG found that about 31% of consumers now use AI somewhere in their purchase journey, roughly triple the rate of 18 months ago. The place where people first learn a product exists is moving into a layer that brands can influence far less directly than a search ranking or a shelf placement.

## One in Three Shoppers Brings AI Into the Purchase

BCG's figures describe a behavior that has moved from novelty to routine. Beyond the headline number, the firm identified a group it calls "AI loyalists," about 19% of consumers, who reach for AI regularly rather than occasionally. The conversion is high: BCG found that 70% of the consumers who use AI go on to buy the product it recommended. For many shoppers the assistant is now part of how the choice gets made, not a stray question asked on the way to it.

The study behind those numbers is large. BCG's Global Advantage practice and its Center for Customer Insight surveyed more than 13,000 consumers across 12 markets, ran over 100 interviews, and analyzed more than 1,000 brands. BCG published the findings under the title [Consumers Trust AI to Buy Better. Brands Must Adapt.](https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/consumers-trust-ai-to-buy-better-brands-must-adapt) a framing that puts the burden on companies to respond rather than on shoppers to catch up.

## The Recommendation Often Names a Brand the Shopper Did Not Know

More than half of AI-assisted purchase journeys surface a brand the shopper had not been considering. That changes what the assistant does in a marketing funnel. It is not only closing sales for brands a buyer already knew; it is handling the introduction, the discovery stage where a buyer forms a shortlist.

For an incumbent that has spent years building name recognition, that loosens a familiar advantage. A shopper who once would have typed a known brand into a search box may instead describe a need to an assistant and take what it returns. For a smaller or newer company, the same shift is an opening, provided the assistant surfaces it. In both cases the introduction is made by a system neither company controls.

## Google's Referral Traffic Is Already Slipping

The move away from the search box is not a forecast. Digital Content Next, a trade body for digital publishers, found a median 10% year-over-year drop in Google search referral traffic across its members in mid-2025. Consumer brands, the non-news category, were hit hardest at 14%, and some members reported losses as high as 25%. Digital Content Next attributed the decline to Google's AI Overviews, the summaries that increasingly answer a query on the results page itself and remove the reason to click through.

The same channel is draining from two directions. Buyers are consulting standalone assistants, and the search engine they still use is answering more of their questions before they reach a link. The traffic a brand once earned by ranking well is worth less when fewer people leave the results page.

## People Shop With AI Faster Than They Trust It

Adoption is running ahead of trust. YouGov polling of 1,287 US adults in December 2025 found that only 26% of Americans trust AI in retail "a lot" or "somewhat," while 32% do not trust it at all. Trust thins as the stakes rise: 65% said they trust AI to compare prices, but just 14% trust it to place an order.

Those two findings sit together. People will let an assistant do the research and narrow the field while keeping the final commitment for themselves. BCG expects the reluctance to ease, projecting that consumer trust in AI will rise 15 percentage points by 2030. Either way, a brand planning for this market has to reach the buyer who trusts the assistant to build a shortlist but not to check out, which puts a premium on being one of the options it presents at the comparison stage.

## Brands Cannot See Why an AI Recommends Them

The hardest part of the shift for marketers is that the new discovery layer is opaque. A brand can measure its search ranking, its ad placement, and its shelf position. It generally cannot see whether an AI assistant is recommending it, to whom, or on what basis. When the assistant names a competitor instead, the brand often has no way to know it happened, let alone why.

That opacity turns getting surfaced into a discipline of its own, distinct from search engine optimization and still taking shape. It rewards a clear, machine-readable presence in the sources these systems draw on, and it makes the assistant's reasoning something brands will try to read the way they once studied a ranking algorithm. The effect is uneven across categories and models. A company that treats AI recommendation as a channel it has to earn, without reliable feedback on how it is doing, is closer to the state of AI brand discovery than one waiting for the dashboards to arrive.

## FAQ

**Q: How do people actually use AI to shop?**
BCG found that about 31% of consumers now use AI somewhere in the purchase journey, with roughly 19% relying on it regularly. In practice that ranges from researching options and comparing prices to acting on a specific recommendation. BCG reported that 70% of AI users bought the product the assistant recommended.

**Q: Is AI replacing Google search for finding products?**
It is taking a share of the discovery that search used to own. Digital Content Next reported a median 10% year-over-year drop in Google referral traffic to its publisher members in mid-2025, rising to 14% for consumer brands, which it attributed to Google's AI Overviews answering queries directly. Standalone AI assistants are absorbing more of that discovery as well.

**Q: Do shoppers trust AI recommendations?**
Less than their usage suggests. YouGov found in December 2025 that 26% of US adults trust AI in retail a lot or somewhat, while 32% do not trust it at all. Trust was higher for lower-stakes tasks, with 65% trusting AI to compare prices and only 14% trusting it to place an order.

**Q: How does a brand get recommended by an AI?**
There is no settled playbook. A brand generally cannot see whether an assistant is recommending it or why, because the systems combine training data, live retrieval, and their own reasoning without exposing the result. Earning a place in an AI's answer is becoming its own discipline, separate from search optimization and still being worked out.