1 in 5 UK consumers use AI for product search and price tracking

The Trend	The Strategy Gap	The Solution
1 in 5 consumers use AI for price tracking and product search in 2026.	2 in 3 retail execs are not targeting AI as a strategy to influence customers.	Adopt AI checkout and agentic commerce to gain an edge in 2026-30.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to penetrate every aspect of daily life, with nearly two thirds (63%) of UK consumers having used a generative AI app like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT at least once in their life as of May 2026.[1]

Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends 2026 survey, published in June, also found that one in ten UK consumers use a Gen AI app every day, rising to 18% of people in Greater London.

Nationally, nearly a third of people now use Gen AI at least once a week:

Daily	Weekly	Monthly	Less often	Once or twice	Never
10%	21%	11%	9%	11%	37%

Which best describes your use of Gen AI in 2026? Source: Deloitte DCT 2026 [2]

As AI usage continues to normalise, ‘asking AI’ is becoming more routine too. In the six months to May 2026, EY found about a third of Brits had used AI for each of the following:

Accessing customer support (35%)
Driving and route planning (31%)
Identifying medical symptoms (26%)

Crucially, EY’s survey revealed that the majority of consumers (52%) feel comfortable adopting AI in practical contexts, if they believe it will offer them better value for money.[3]

Searching for Value with AI

These trends tally with KPMG’s UK Consumer Pulse survey from the end of 2025, which found that a fifth of UK consumers expected to use AI to track prices in 2026.[4]

At the time, 81% of respondents cited the cost of groceries as a reason to believe that the UK economy was worsening. More than a quarter (27%) expected to spend less on the things they want in 2026.

KPMG reported that 19% of consumers planned to track prices using AI, as well as using AI for product search – putting those two uses at the top of the list of AI-assisted shopping for this year.

Linda Ellett, head of consumer, retail and leisure for KPMG UK, said: “The growth of AI searching and social commerce looks set to continue in 2026, with consumers – particularly of younger age groups – becoming accustomed to finding products this way.”

She added that businesses would need to “adapt their respective marketing strategies” in response.

How Useful is AI for Shopping?

While opinions vary, research shows that the majority of UK consumers find AI beneficial in the shopping experience, for example when receiving AI-driven product recommendations.

Very useful	Fairly useful	Not useful
36%	26%	39%

How useful are AI-driven product recommendations in the shopping experience? Source: EY 2025[5]

EY found that 50% of AI-powered product suggestions favour premium brands, putting more emphasis on the importance of product visibility for manufacturers and retailers.

Silvia Rindone, EY UK & Ireland Retail Lead, said: “Many retailers are adopting AI to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of their teams, but there are also opportunities to deliver greater personalised propositions and services.

“Our survey showed that over half of UK consumers are already using AI to enhance their online shopping experience. The risk for retailers is that they fail to adapt and miss an opportunity to reach the consumers of tomorrow.”

How AI is Transforming Supply and Demand

The presence of AI throughout supply chains is changing the nature of decision-making. While manufacturers, wholesalers, logistics providers and retailers are all embracing AI as a way to drive efficiencies in warehouse operations, consumers have the ultimate control over the demand side.

In April, Deloitte published their 2026 Global Consumer Products Industry Outlook, and noted that “consumers are becoming AI-powered too”.[6]

With product search and purchase behaviour increasingly influenced by Gen AI, Deloitte predicted that this will be “the next battleground” for consumer retail.

Some of the elements for executives to focus on include:

Generative engine optimisation (GEO)
AI-enabled checkout processes
Agentic (i.e. AI-automated) commerce

Despite the increasing duration of the AI commerce trend, Deloitte found that fewer than one in three (31%) of the executives they surveyed were actively investigating how to more effectively influence AI-assisted customers.

This is not a trend that is going away in the near future. Deloitte’s report concluded: “Over the next five years, the consumer market will be reshaped by heightened expectations of value, evolving shopping behaviours, and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence.”

How to Tackle AI Adoption in UK Ecommerce

Whether you want to improve efficiencies in your warehouse operations, or influence customers’ buying behaviour when making AI-assisted product searches, this is an area that should be at the core of your competitive strategy for the rest of the decade and beyond.

MRM’s IT services can help, powered by our software management system, Newton. This is a single platform that controls order processing, customer service, client fulfilment solutions and warehouse management.

It’s capable of making intelligent calculations – for example, finding the most economic shipping option to a specific destination, based on predictions of the amount of packaging that will be needed across multiple orders.

The result is a more cost-effective warehouse operation, with ecommerce orders directly linked with warehouse inventory in real-time, reducing the risk of failed fulfilment.

Ask How MRM Can Help

To find out more, or for a general conversation about how MRM can help you reach your customers more effectively in this era of AI-generated product recommendations and price searches, call us today.

You can speak to our team on 01858 410510 or fill in our contact form to let us know what you’d like to discuss.

All enquiries are welcome and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can for a 15-minute fact-finding chat, from which we can identify objectives, timescales and costs for the different ways MRM can help you achieve your business goals.