Artificial intelligence (AI) in U.S. e-commerce
Choose a region:
As the artificial intelligence (AI) market grows in the United States, e-commerce companies introduce AI-powered solutions to optimize their businesses and enhance the customer experience for U.S. shoppers. In addition to unicorns leading the innovation race, the U.S. market has seen big e-tailers developing in-house AI technologies, with giants like Walmart pioneering in agentic commerce thanks to AI shopping assistants guiding the consumer throughout the shopping journey.
E-commerce companies have certainly been hit by the lower traffic volumes due to the impact of AI in product search. As generative AI platforms serve as search engines for product search and serve consumers in product discovery, online shops host much less pre-purchase browsing activity. Google interjected the trend and directly entered the AI platforms competition with AI overviews integrated into the SERP results. That represented a massive change in e-commerce SEO and indirectly a huge impact on online conversions.
Electronics retailers ahead
Not all sectors are investing equally in AI adoption. Retailers from the electronics and appliances sectors use machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, and voice recognition more than any other retail sector. Fashion and food and beverage retailers lag behind when it comes to future planning, with less than ten percent of retail businesses envisioning AI adoption in the mentioned sectors. In 2024, 47 percent of Chief Information Officers from consumer goods and retail companies admitted their companies were in pilot mode, meaning they were still experimenting with generative AI.AI uses and their effect on e-commerce traffic
In the United States, 95 percent of e-commerce companies witness a good to very good return on investment when implementing AI technologies. In most cases, AI tools addressed customer service, marketing analysis, and automation. Translation services were important too, as they finalized the localization of e-commerce businesses in foreign countries.E-commerce companies have certainly been hit by the lower traffic volumes due to the impact of AI in product search. As generative AI platforms serve as search engines for product search and serve consumers in product discovery, online shops host much less pre-purchase browsing activity. Google interjected the trend and directly entered the AI platforms competition with AI overviews integrated into the SERP results. That represented a massive change in e-commerce SEO and indirectly a huge impact on online conversions.
