How UK Shoppers Plan to Use It

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring because they were desperately prompting Claude to try and find the perfect gift.

With 100 days until Christmas, we surveyed 2,000 UK adults about how AI Christmas shopping and how the technology will factor into their plans. 

Fifty-three percent of people have or are open to using AI to find presents this year with 22% believing AI would actually choose a better gift for them than their partner.

Comfort level with agentic shopping decreases throughout the purchase funnel. However, people like to know they can buy with AI, even if they won’t actually do it: 39% of those open to using AI said they’re more likely to shop with retailers that have AI purchasing agents.

The UK’s  most common Christmas stressor isn’t money. It’s the pressure to find the perfect gift, with a quarter of shoppers spending between 3-5 hours searching for gifts, according to the survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Forter. 

Nineteen percent of shoppers have already used AI to find Christmas gifts, while 34% are considering doing it for the first time this year.

According to the study, shoppers value AI’s ability to save them time, give them better ideas, and help them discover new products and brands. This is consistent with category-level adoption. Agentic browsing for holiday gifts is especially prevalent in technology (32%) and beauty (26%), where products have a lot of nuanced specifications that lend themselves to comparison shopping.

However, AI Christmas shopping feels taboo for many consumers. Most gift-givers would keep AI’s assistance a secret: 25% only if the gift lands well, but 32% wouldn’t tell no matter what.

This data showed an unexpected age gap. Despite being the most fervent adopters of AI, 50% of Gen Z shoppers consider AI-assisted shopping to be “cheating,” when it comes to gift giving, compared with just 15% of Boomers.

Discovery is the current agentic front door. The top AI Christmas shopping use cases all happen pre-purchase: hunting for prices and deals, and gathering inspiration and product recommendations.

While 42% would let AI handle searching for gifts, 21% would let it select gifts, and just 12% would let it handle making a purchase autonomously.

However, we did see a downfunnel disparity by gender. We found that women dominate discovery, while men lead the charge at checkout. A quarter of men have had AI actually choose their gifts in the past, compared with 14% of women.

This mirrors established consumer behavior. Using AI to find products and prices is an acceleration of Google searches. Transacting with AI is still uncharted territory for many, something people haven’t yet gotten comfortable with.

Join the Agentic Commerce Collective

AI is going to be a major factor into this year’s Christmas shopping — as well as shopping beyond December 26. The Agentic Commerce Collective exists to help merchants get more agentic ready. Every month, commerce leaders come together to discuss what’s happening now and what’s coming next.

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