Redefining retail in the age of AI

Retail is always evolving; from mom-and-pop shops to megastores, in-store browsing to ecommerce carts, and printed ads to PPC. The latest front is AI, and it’s changing everything all at once. Not just how retailers operate, but how customers engage with brands.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how consumers experience brands, and how brands scale those experiences. Consumers now research, make purchases, and interact with brands all through large language models and brand chatbots.

But, as more retailers adopt and expand AI use cases, technology alone isn’t a competitive differentiator. The differentiation is in the strategy, the human-led way of deploying AI to solve customer needs, personalize in innovative ways, and make changes customers actually want.

High-performing retail brands are using AI to deepen customer insights, strengthen relationships, and actually scale human connection.

Here are three retail customer engagement trends to master.

Trend 1: Discovery is changing at pace

Let’s start at the beginning of the customer journey. Traditional search journeys are fragmenting and discovery is now happening through social platforms, influencers, UGC, AI assistants, and algorithm-driven feeds.

According to Braze commissioned research by OnePoll, 19% of surveyed consumers already use AI intermediaries to discover products, compare options, and negotiate discounts. And a further 27% plan to adopt them within the next 12 months.

Why? Consumers cite better deals (35%), improved discovery (32%), and more personalized experiences (25%), alongside time savings and greater control over privacy. Modern online shoppers don’t want to endlessly browse; they want someone else to find them the best deals and AI can do that in an instant.

For retailers, this may mean fewer direct brand-customer moments. But it also means exposure to new customers interested in AI-driven journeys. To mitigate and maximize the risks and opportunities, retailers need a multi-faceted approach.

• Add value to direct customer relationships – through relevance, offers, and experience
• Bring AI convenience to owned properties – adding conversational search and discovery to your website and apps
• Establish presence on AI tools like ChatGPT – they recently launched their brand offer
• Review product listings for GEO – generative engine optimization
• Make AI engagement actionable – Braze customers bring ChatGPT data into customer profiles using our ChatGPT SDK

Retailers who will win in this new era of AI driven discovery will be the ones who lean into AI that is led by consumer sentiment.

Trend 2: Comfort grows with retail AI recommendations

In the OnePoll survey, 55% of consumers said they are comfortable receiving AI recommendations and advice. This rises to 61% among Gen Z and still sits at 40% among Boomers, showing adoption is broadening across generations rather than being limited to younger audiences.

40% of consumers agree that AI recommendations help them discover products or services they wouldn’t have found on their own.

Behind-the-scenes, agentic AI is enabling systems that can coordinate and optimize entire customer journeys with minimal human intervention—selecting next best actions, adapting messaging in real time, and continuously refining engagement across channels.

This moves customer engagement from highly segmented journeys triggered by user behavior, to genuine one-to-one, real-time engagement. It’s like every shopper has an assistant learning what they love and helping them find it.

The challenge for retailers is ensuring that personalization enhances choice rather than constraining it as 43% feel AI recommendations can limit rather than expand their choices. It’s about delivering value to the customer, not just the brand.

• Explore how agentic AI can support your customers to discover products they love
• Ensure agentic AI goals are customer-centric, not just brand-centric
• Be clear about your use of AI for customer benefit, to build trust and engagement

Consumers are open to AI when it enhances their experiences, so brands must spend time really listening to consumer preferences now more than ever.

Trend 3: AI should enhance human connection, not replace it

As AI-generated content becomes more common, originality and authenticity become even more valuable. Customers are increasingly sensitive to experiences that feel generic, impersonal, or inauthentic.

35% of people surveyed by OnePoll said they feel ‘disappointed’ when brand messages lack the human touch. And perception of how well brands maintain human connection differs across demographics. 64% of Gen Z and 59% of Millennials think brands manage to maintain the human touch in AI-powered communication, but this dips to 27% of Boomers.

Using AI to scale output isn’t enough. Brands need to use AI to scale connection. And while you might think this only matters for older generations, younger cohorts are sensitive to this too—just in a different way.

While older shoppers specifically want human connection, younger consumers want authentic connection. Data shows that younger consumers care less about where communication comes from, so long as their experience is fast, convenient, and feels genuine.

52% of Gen Z agree that it’s important for brands to connect with them emotionally compared to 28% of Boomers and 68% of Boomers would accept slower service if it meant interacting with a human, versus 55% of Gen Z.

To balance this cross-generational need for connection at scale, retailers are combining machine intelligence with human storytelling, cultural awareness, and emotional nuance.

How? By using agentic AI team members to remove operational friction and allow their human teams to focus on creativity, strategy, and connection.

• Define clear brand voice and creative guardrails for AI-generated content
• Explore how multi-agent AI can provide QA that stops ‘slop’ before it goes live and keeps AI content on-brand at the point of creation, not after the fact
• Use AI to remove operational workload, not creative direction and preserve human oversight in storytelling, campaigns, and brand moments

Authenticity in retail has always been core to the customer experience, and this will only continue as more AI enhancements are released.

Next-gen AI is rewriting the rules of customer engagement

Until recently, AI in customer engagement has focused on helping brands work smarter and faster. Predictive analytics helped anticipate behaviour and improve targeting. Generative AI accelerated content creation, enabling faster campaign execution.

These capabilities remain powerful foundations. But agentic AI is evolving beyond marketing team support and into autonomous orchestration. Rather than creating fixed journeys, brands can now design intelligent systems that respond dynamically to customer behavior end-to-end.

This shifts how teams operate. Human focus moves toward strategy, creativity, and brand direction, while AI handles ongoing optimization in the background. This gives brands and customers what they both want: Genuine human connection at scale.