Consumer adoption of agentic AI shopping is accelerating, according to a survey of over 1,800 customers by performance marketing firm RTB House. Forty-two percent of U.S. millennials said they would allow AI agents to buy items on their behalf within a $250 budget if they could return purchases within seven days; without that safeguard, about a third would permit such purchases (Retail Dive - Technology). Additionally, 59% of U.S. consumers credit AI platforms with highlighting brands they didn't know, and 62% have relied on AI tools to compare prices, brands, models and reviews (Retail Dive - Technology).
Despite openness to agentic purchasing, consumers still prefer human oversight. Over a third (35%) of survey respondents said they would prefer a human to review transactions before AI agents make purchases, rising to 44% for baby boomers (Retail Dive - Technology). AI has surpassed traditional information sources in trustworthiness, with 44% of consumers trusting AI tools compared to 59% who trust friends and family, outpacing influencers, newspapers, and social media platforms (Retail Dive - Technology). In the U.S., Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT lead at 43% each, followed by Claude (23%) and Grok (21%) (Retail Dive - Technology).
The agentic commerce market is poised for explosive growth. By 2030, the U.S. agentic commerce market is projected to reach $1 trillion (Retail Dive - Technology), and 68% of survey respondents said they had used at least one AI platform in the past three months to shop. Amazon's Alexa for Shopping saw interactions skyrocket fivefold year-over-year, with more than 350 million customers using it in the past year, signaling that retailers are investing heavily in their own agentic AI tools (Retail Dive - Technology).