Akeneo’s survey found that 75% of consumers have noticed AI-powered recommendations or chatbots while shopping online, and nearly half of those have actively engaged with these tools.
AI is transforming ecommerce faster than ever — from personalised product picks that feel made just for you, to chatbots ready to help anytime, day or night. But while these smart tools make shopping smoother and more convenient, shoppers still wonder: can they really trust AI?
Akeneo’s latest survey reveals the real story behind US consumers’ experiences with AI-powered recommendations and support. With 32% buying based on AI suggestions, the potential is huge, yet trust remains a puzzle retailers must solve.
Conducted by Dynata, this study of 1,000 US shoppers dives into how people feel about AI’s role in ecommerce — shining a light on the challenges and huge opportunities ahead.
ALSO READ: Brand Identity is The Ultimate Marketing Message
AI’s Impact on Product Discovery
In a crowded ecommerce market, consumers are discerning about their shopping experiences, and AI is playing a vital role in shaping their choices. Akeneo’s survey found that 75% of consumers have noticed AI-powered recommendations or chatbots while shopping online, and nearly half of those have actively engaged with these tools.
For those who acted on AI-driven recommendations, satisfaction is high: 84% reported being happy with their purchase, highlighting AI’s potential to enhance decision-making. This points to a significant opportunity for retailers to invest in AI technologies that refine the product experience.
Specific AI Improvements:
- 37% have seen smarter product recommendations.
- 33% experienced faster customer support.
- 31% enjoyed more accurate search results.
- 28% found better, clearer product information.
- 27% appreciated AI-generated summaries of customer reviews.
These stats reflect how AI-powered insights, driven by real-time, accurate data, help customers shop confidently, reducing returns and boosting satisfaction. Looking ahead, 42% of consumers expect faster, more accurate support, while nearly 40% anticipate more personalised recommendations tailored to their unique preferences.
Building Trust in AI and Chatbots
While AI adoption accelerates across ecommerce platforms, consumer trust remains a critical barrier. Only 45% of survey respondents expressed some level of trust in AI recommendations and chatbots for delivering relevant product suggestions. This trust gap underscores the importance of transparency—consumers want clarity on how their data is used to power AI-driven experiences.
ALSO READ: 35 Must-Read Books on Customer Experience
The survey also reveals challenges with chatbot satisfaction: only 38% of shoppers felt positively about the support chatbots provided, and just 14% were very satisfied. For brands, this signals a need to refine chatbot capabilities, delivering more personalised, helpful interactions to win over sceptical users.
Transparency around data use is equally vital. Nearly half of consumers (43%) believe brands are not transparent about how their information is collected and used, with another 30% unsure.
Yet, despite these concerns, optimism remains strong: 49% of consumers said that they are at least somewhat likely to continue shopping with brands that use AI to enhance their experience.
Looking Ahead: The Future of AI in Ecommerce
“AI will continue to deeply integrate into the digital shopping experience and ecommerce platforms, but it must be done cautiously and purposefully,” said Romain Fouache, CEO at Akeneo.
“Our data confirms that consumers are cautious yet curious and optimistic about AI’s future impact. As demand for transparency, trust, and personalisation grows, businesses must embed these principles into their AI strategies to build strong, loyal customer relationships.”
For ecommerce brands, the message is clear: investing in AI technology alone is not enough. Building consumer trust through transparent data practices and delivering genuinely helpful, personalised experiences will determine who thrives in the evolving digital marketplace.
The takeaway? Retailers who combine AI innovation with transparency and trust will lead the way in creating loyal, satisfied customers.
ALSO READ: To Drive ROI, CX Leaders Must Move Beyond Vanity Metrics
Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring, sentiment analysis, etc. Currently, Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 employees worldwide.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software provider, offering robust CRM and automation solutions. Some of its products include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software. Guided by its inbound methodology, HubSpot enables companies to prioritise innovation and customer success.
Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks is a global AI-powered business software provider. Its tech stack includes a scalable and comprehensive suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams, ensuring value for immediate business impact. Its product portfolio includes Customer Service Suite, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshsuccess, and Freshservice. Freshservice for Business Teams has helped several global organisations to enhance their operational efficiency.
Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
The company offers comprehensive cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gaming Consoles, Microsoft Advertising, Copilot, among other things, to help organisations offer enhanced CX and ROI. Its generative-AI-powered speech and voice recognition solutions,such as Cortana and Azure Speech Services empowers developers to build intelligent applications.
IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
Uniphore is an enterprise-class, AI-native company that was incubated in 2008. Its enterprise-class multimodal AI and data platform unifies all elements of voice, video, text and data by leveraging Generative AI, Knowledge AI, Emotion AI and workflow automation. Some of its products include U-Self Serve, U-Assist, U-Capture, and U-Analyze. Its Q for Sale is a conversational intelligence software that guides revenue teams with AI-powered insights, offering clarity on how to effectively keep prospects engaged.
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
8×8 offers out-of-the-box contact centre solutions, assisting all-size businesses to efficiently meet customer needs and preferences. It offers custom CRM integrations support and integrates effortlessly with third-party CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and more. Offering global support in all time zones & development teams in 5 continents, its patented geo-routing solution ensures consistent voice quality.
Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
Amplitude is a product analytics platform, enabling businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics. The platform leverages the capabilities of 
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
