75% of retailers trust AI Agents to enhance their competitiveness
According to Salesforce, 75% of retailers trust AI agents to optimize their competitiveness, standing out in an increasingly digitalized sector.
A Salesforce report
reveals that retailers are facing mounting pressure due to rising costs, high consumer expectations, and technological complexity. However, artificial intelligence (AI) agents are presented as a key solution to address these challenges. According to the report, three out of four retailers believe that AI agents will be essential to outpace the competition in the coming year.
The Impact of AI on Retail
The sixth Connected Shoppers report by Salesforce, based on surveys of 8,350 shoppers and 1,700 retail decision-makers, highlights the growing importance of AI agents in the sector. Additionally, it points out that strategic markets such as Mexico and Brazil are seeing a significant transformation, with the participation of 500 consumers and 100 industry leaders in both countries, providing a representative perspective of the Latin American region.
The report also underscores how retailers can adapt to changing consumer preferences in the face of increasing market fragmentation.
Challenges in Retail
The rise in customer acquisition costs and the increase in returns are reducing retailers’ margins. This is compounded by factors such as inflation, competition, and evolving consumer behaviors.
To provide efficient service to customers across multiple touchpoints, the two main strategies adopted by retailers are AI and unified commerce, a concept that Salesforce promotes as a way to increase revenue without raising operational costs.
Michelle Grant, Director of Retail Strategy and Insights at Salesforce, states:
“When retailers connect their sales channels, customer data, and operations into a single platform, they create seamless shopping experiences both online and in-store. This unified approach boosts productivity and drives growth across the business.”
Consumer Preferences
Although physical stores remain essential, their share of purchases is declining, from 45% in 2024 to a projected 41% in 2026.
Digital spending is being dispersed across multiple markets, retailer websites, brand pages, and delivery apps, rather than consolidating in a single channel.
Retailers are responding to this trend by increasing AI adoption, with 76% planning to increase their investment in this technology in the coming year.
Customer service stands out as the primary use case for AI agents in this type of retail, as these agents enable automatic responses to queries, order tracking, and returns management at any time, freeing human employees for higher-value interactions.
The Expansion of AI Agents in Retail
In addition to improving customer service, retailers anticipate that AI agents will expand into many other areas, such as website optimization, marketing campaigns, employee training, and inventory management.
According to Michelle Grant:
“AI agents represent the next wave of AI innovation in retail—a digital workforce that promises to reshape how merchants expand their teams, serve and market to customers, and streamline operations.”
AI agents need access to data from all retail systems to work effectively. However, many of these systems are disconnected, posing a challenge for both employees and shoppers.
- 81% of retailers say that inefficient processes and technology are reducing the productivity of store employees.
- Meanwhile, 49% of shoppers have abandoned purchases due to friction in the ordering process.
Fortunately, 86% of retailers have launched unified commerce initiatives. By connecting operations across channels and departments on a single platform, unified commerce improves efficiency and the shopping experience, thereby enhancing AI usage.
Consumer Trust
The transformation of retail is not a one-sided process. Consumers are already exploring the use of AI in their shopping journeys, with 39% of them, and 54% of Generation Z, using AI to discover products. This generation is 10 times more likely than baby boomers to use AI in this context.
Regarding AI agents, consumers are interested in optimizing loyalty point management, returns, and other interactions. Moreover, 63% of Generation Z shoppers are willing to allow agents to make purchases on their behalf.
However, for shoppers to accept AI agents making decisions on their behalf, building trust is crucial. When asked what would increase their confidence in this technology, shoppers ranked the following factors as priorities:
- Protection of privacy and data security.
- The ability to easily deactivate/activate the agent.
- Requiring approval before any purchase.
- Transparency about data usage.
- Availability of human customer service support.
According to Grant:
“The data is clear: both retailers and shoppers are moving toward a future with AI agents. But success depends on addressing both sides of the equation: building the connected technology infrastructure that retailers need while simultaneously offering the trust and transparency that shoppers demand.”
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