Key insights
- A Visa report indicates increasing consumer comfort with AI-driven shopping, particularly among younger generations. Consumers are using AI for price comparison and even allowing AI to make purchases. Businesses are also willing to let AI agents negotiate with each other. This trend suggests a potential shift in consumer behavior and retail strategies, but its overall impact on US equities is currently limited.
According to a new Visa report, more consumers are feeling comfortable with letting AI chatbots do their online shopping for them, including comparing prices or even making purchases on their behalf.
Yahoo Finance Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre and Senior Reporter Brooke DiPalma break down this headline.
Brooke, nearly 40% of Americans say they've made purchases they would not have otherwise made because of AI tools with Gen Z and millennials heading the way and you can throw my generation X uh persona in there too. I've bought a lot of stuff I probably would have bought otherwise.
It's actually insane to think about the adoption rate, especially among young people of these AI agents. It's it's the new Google search. So you're going into these chatbots and you're searching for maybe an idea sparking an inspiration. We talked a lot about this around the holiday season. and what this Visa report is now really pointing out, is this really coming to fruition. They said that 88% are willing to even provide pricing, inventory data. They're they're even trying to sort of understand what exactly they need. They're also saying here that they would allow them to do their shopping entirely. But keep in mind, this is more of a a younger generation that they're pointing to as well.
Uh Jared, I have to bring it to you. I mean, I don't know if my mom's going to jump in and say this is how much I'm willing to spend. This is where we're going and this is where I'm you know, going to get this. But if it's interesting to see this what we have on the screen right here, is that this is what we talked a lot about during the holiday season as well is that there's a lot of price comparison, maybe item comparison happening on these chatbots as well.
Well, one of the lines I'm reading here, most businesses are willing to let AI agents negotiate directly with other AI agents and and they're all already optimizing products and offers for them. So this is kind of like, okay, let my bot talk to your bot and you know, that used to be a human-to-human story, but you know, you got to think that maybe that's going to be a lot more uh time saving this way.
And also like what does this mean for productivity? Will we actually see businesses then end up being able to push out more with with less amount of their workforce. We did hear from Challenger Gray and Christmas just last week with that report that there is a growing number of layoffs that have to do with AI. And so when you point out that stat, which is what I was getting at before is that 53% would permit AI agents to negotiate. It's like what happens to every salesperson ever then? What happens to that middle man?
Well, and there's always going to be the great ones are always going to have a job because you just you're going to need those high pressure situations. You're going to need a human in there, I think. Um, but yeah, for nuts and bolts stuff, I think we're going to outsource almost everything, not just shopping, like everything to AI, but
I mean, I still love a good experiential shopping trip. So I don't know about just about everything.