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As the holidays approach, an increasing number of retailers—and consumers—seem to be cozying up to artificial intelligence.
Salesforce predicts that AI will influence 19 percent of global Cyber Week sales, up two percentage points from 2023’s figure of 17 percent.
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Retail implementation of AI systems continues to increase, and the fact that nearly one-fifth of global e-commerce transactions could be driven, in some part, by the technology is significant, said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy for Salesforce.
As a point of comparison, Salesforce data shows social media platforms drive one-tenth of e-commerce traffic and 2 to 3 percent of all orders, without much room for incremental growth. That both adoption and use of AI continue to grow year over year could be indicative of the allure of a more powerful, personalization-focused technology.
“This is having a much higher impact than social media, [even though] social media is a much more visible consumer platform,” Schwartz said.
Salesforce attributes the majority of that influence to product recommendations made by AI systems. In many cases, the systems that determine the items a site recommends to each individual consumer remain largely undetectable to the average shopper. But there’s room for new types of technology, like AI agents, which are more visible to consumers, to help grow the percentage of AI interactions driving sales, too.
“A lot of the growth we’re seeing…is coming from those newer technologies that are being implemented, so as more retailers enable these new AI technologies and experiences, this number will grow,” Schwartz explained.
AI-powered agents have only recently started to emerge in the retail space, and they differ from a run-of-the-mill chatbot; agents can automate tasks that a human would otherwise have to work on.
So, while a chatbot might be able to answer a question like, “What is this sweater made out of?” with relative accuracy, an agent might be able to help a consumer initiate the return process, find their most convenient return center and offer the most optimal refund option, all based on what it knows about a consumer’s prior purchases and habits. Agents can also offer consumers highly personalized product recommendations across a variety of channels, just as Amazon’s Rufus can do.