For years, ecommerce has followed a familiar formula. Brands buy attention on social media, send shoppers to their websites and make the checkout process as quick and easy as possible.
That approach may be starting to change.
New research from RTB House suggests AI is becoming a much bigger part of the way consumers discover brands, compare products and decide what to buy. Its latest report, Who’s Buying? Consumer Trust in the Age of Agentic AI, surveyed 1,840 consumers across the US, UK, France and Japan.
The results show that AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews are now trusted by shoppers more than some of the biggest social media platforms.
That matters because it changes where the shopping journey begins.
AI is becoming part of the research process
Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT now rank ahead of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook when consumers are asked about trust in shopping advice. They also rank ahead of newspapers and major media outlets.
Consumers are not necessarily replacing social media with AI. The two serve different purposes.
Social platforms are good at putting products in front of people. AI is becoming useful when people want to understand those products.
A shopper can ask an AI tool to compare two brands, explain the differences between products, find alternatives or suggest companies they may not have come across before.
That gives AI a different role in the buying process. It is less about grabbing someone’s attention and more about helping them decide.
More choice could mean longer buying journeys
One of the more surprising findings is that AI is not necessarily making people buy faster.
In fact, it can have the opposite effect.
RTB House found that 42% of US consumers and 33% of consumers outside the US say AI tools increase the amount of time it takes them to reach a final purchase decision.
The reason is fairly straightforward. AI can give shoppers more options.
Instead of seeing one or two products and making a quick decision, consumers can ask for alternatives, compare prices, look at different brands and continue researching until they feel confident about their choice.
Among US Gen Z consumers, 48% said AI increases the time it takes them to make a final purchase decision.
For retailers, that means the customer journey may be getting longer rather than shorter.
AI is also helping people discover new brands
There is a clear opportunity here for brands that have struggled to compete for attention on social media.
According to the research, 59% of US consumers and 52% of consumers outside the US say AI is good at introducing them to brands they did not previously know.
The response was particularly strong among older US consumers. Some 61% of Gen X respondents and 62% of Baby Boomers agreed that AI is good at surfacing unfamiliar brands.
That could change how businesses think about brand discovery.
A consumer does not necessarily need to see an advert, follow an influencer or come across a brand while scrolling through Instagram. They might discover it because an AI tool recommends it when answering a question.
For smaller and less established brands, that could create new opportunities to compete with companies that have much larger advertising budgets.
Would consumers let AI buy something for them?
The next step is already starting to emerge.
If consumers are comfortable using AI to research products, would they also let it make a purchase?
The research suggests that some are.
Among US Millennials, 42% said they would be comfortable giving an AI agent a budget of up to $250 to make a purchase on their behalf if a seven-day return period was guaranteed.
Outside the US, 27% of Millennials said they would be comfortable doing the same.
Even without a return guarantee, 34% of US Millennials and 20% of Millennials outside the US said they would be comfortable allowing an AI agent to complete a transaction.
There is an important condition, though. People still want to have control over the purchase.
Approval before checkout was the most requested safeguard in the research.
That points towards a gradual move towards agentic commerce rather than consumers simply handing over their credit cards and letting AI do whatever it wants.
People may be happy for an AI agent to find products, compare options and prepare a purchase. They still want the final say.
What does this mean for ecommerce?
The traditional ecommerce journey is becoming less straightforward.
A customer might once have discovered a product on social media, clicked through to a retailer and bought it within a few minutes.
Now they might discover a product through an AI tool, compare it with several competitors, ask for cheaper alternatives, check the differences between brands and only then visit a retailer’s website.
That has implications for marketers.
Getting someone to your website is no longer necessarily the first step. It could be one of the later steps in the process.
Brands therefore need to think about how they appear when consumers are researching products, not just how they appear when consumers are ready to buy.
The information available about a brand matters. So do product details, reviews, pricing, comparisons and the overall quality of the experience once a shopper reaches the site.
The end of the quick checkout mindset?
The ecommerce industry has spent years trying to remove friction from the buying process.
That is not going to change. Nobody wants a complicated checkout.
But AI could mean that the most important part of the customer journey happens before a shopper reaches the checkout.
Consumers now have access to tools that can give them more information than ever before. They can compare more products, find brands they have never heard of and ask questions that would previously have required hours of research.
For retailers, that means winning the sale may require more than getting a customer to click an advert.
They need to be considered by AI tools, provide enough information to survive comparison and give shoppers a good enough experience to close the sale when they are finally ready.
The research from RTB House suggests that AI is not replacing the shopping journey. It is changing it.
Social media will still play a role in discovery, and retailers will still want fast and simple checkouts. But between those two points, there is now a growing layer of AI-powered research and comparison.
For ecommerce brands, that means the competition for the customer may start much earlier than the moment they arrive on a product page.
And increasingly, the first person helping them make that decision may not be a salesperson, an influencer or an advert.
It may be an AI assistant.
Source: RTB House, “Who’s Buying? Consumer Trust in the Age of Agentic AI”. The research was conducted in June and July 2026 among 1,840 consumers across the United States, United Kingdom, France and Japan.
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