AI Finds the Deal, Shoppers Still Make the Call

When it comes to retail shopping, consumers are largely using artificial intelligence as a shortcut through the growing complexity of eCommerce rather than as a replacement for making their own decisions. While AI is finding its strongest role in tasks that save time and simplify comparisons, shoppers largely eschew the technology for other decisions like making the final purchase.

That trend stands out in the new PYMNTS Intelligence report, “The Overlap Effect: How Amazon and Walmart Expanded the Crowd and Shrank the Basket.” While the report focuses on the first-ever overlap between Amazon Prime Day and Walmart Deals, it also reveals that AI has become an important influence on how consumers prepare for major shopping events. Rather than browsing retailer websites first, many shoppers now begin with AI tools that compare prices, surface promotions and explain product features across multiple merchants. On the other hand, artificial intelligence sees much less use for personal choices such as deciding which style they prefer or whether a purchase fits their budget.

Key Findings:

21% of shoppers who participated in Amazon Prime Day, Walmart Deals or both used an AI chatbot or assistant while shopping. Among Generation Z consumers, that figure climbed to 35%.

Among AI users, 38% used the technology to compare prices across retailers, 36% used it to find deals and 32% relied on it to research product features.

Only 23% of AI users leveraged the technology to find gift ideas or recommendations, and just 19% used it to place an order or complete a purchase.

The pattern offers a glimpse of where AI delivers the greatest value. Consumers appear willing to turn over repetitive, data-heavy work to software while keeping subjective decisions in their own hands. Comparing prices across dozens of listings is like a wedding photographer going through gigabytes of photos to remove all the pictures where someone is blinking, but letting the client decide which ones to print out for the album. The tedious but necessary work is done without even needing to be asked, but the final, most important choice is too personal to trust to anyone else.

The report also found that AI’s influence was strongest among younger shoppers and financially strained consumers, groups that often have the greatest incentive to stretch every dollar. At the same time, Amazon and Walmart still captured the transaction even as product discovery increasingly occurred elsewhere. This creates an opening for retailers that embrace AI rather than compete against it. As these tools improve, retailers that provide accurate product information, competitive pricing and clear value propositions will be well positioned to meet consumers wherever their shopping journey begins.