AI Agents & The Evolving Path to Purchase: How Brands Must Adapt

I'm excited to continue our deep dive series with Lauren Schiavone, founder of Wonder Consulting. In this installment, we're exploring perhaps the most transformative aspect of AI in retail: how it's fundamentally changing the consumer path to purchase.

Lauren brings nearly two decades of experience as a Procter & Gamble executive to this conversation, combining expertise in consumer insights, brand strategy, and enterprise transformation with cutting-edge AI knowledge. What makes our discussion particularly valuable is in actually grounding these emerging technologies in practical applications for professionals operating in the retail industry – whether you're a brand, media buyer, solution provider, or retailer.

As Lauren and I discuss in the final edition of the series, we're about to experience a genuine step change in the consumer path to purchase – how consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase products.

Before we begin, you can catch up on our previous AI in Retail topics here:

Part 1: AI literacy

Part 2: practical first steps

Part 3: what the heck is agentic AI

Part 4: selecting solution providers that go beyond the AI hype

The Shifting Search Landscape

One of the most immediate changes Lauren identified is the fundamental transformation of search behavior:

Search volume is expected to drop by 25% by 2026 as consumers shift their searching to LLMs like ChatGPT. This represents a seismic shift in how consumers find products and information.

Even more striking is the trust consumers are placing in these AI systems: "About 63% of consumers are actually willing to try a brand recommended by an LLM or ChatGPT," Lauren told me

This trust factor creates both opportunity and risk for brands. As Lauren noted, we're seeing LLMs like Perplexity becoming advertising partners and commerce channels in their own right. The implications are clear – brands need to optimize not just for traditional search engines, but for how AI systems understand and recommend their products.

New Discovery Paradigms: From Keywords to Conversations

Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this shift is Amazon's Rufus, which Lauren described as "a harbinger of what is to come elsewhere."

"Rufus is not just that little icon at the bottom shopping assistant," Lauren pointed out. "I'm starting to see Rufus or components of Rufus throughout the website, embedded into search, embedded on the product detail page."

I emphasized during our conversation that Rufus represents something much larger: a shift from keyword-based searching to natural language-based browsing and buying. This transition fundamentally changes how brands need to think about product discoverability. (You can read more about what we now know about Rufus from Amazon's filed patent)

Lauren highlighted a critical insight that many brands might miss: Rufus will go off-site to a brand website to get information about a product. This means your brand's digital presence beyond retail platforms now directly influences AI-powered shopping assistants.

The Rise of Visual AI in Shopping

One of the most fascinating developments Lauren shared was about ChatGPT's voice mode with vision capabilities:

For Pro members, you can use ChatGPT live voice mode with vision, allowing users to take photos or videos of the world around them and engage the AI in a real-time conversation about them.

Lauren demonstrated this with a bottle of Downy Unstoppables, asking the AI, "What is this product and how does it work?" Customers can now do the same thing in front of the shelf.

This visual recognition capability means brands must think beyond text-based optimization to ensure their products are visually distinctive and recognizable by AI systems.

From SEO to AIO: The New Brand Imperative

This evolution demands a fundamental shift in digital strategy. As Lauren put it, "We are gonna have to shift from a world of SEO (search engine optimization) to a world of AI optimization or AIO, or some are even calling it AEO, Answer Engine Optimization."

I was particularly struck by Lauren's insight about brand websites: "Over the years, I think the brand website has just really become a bit of like a check the box activity. But it seems to be the number one place that not just the LLMs like ChatGPT are going to for product information, but also a tool like Rufus."

This represents a significant opportunity for brands that have neglected their direct digital presence. My thesis here is that it's time to bring back the dot com brand website – not necessarily for direct-to-consumer sales, but as a comprehensive information resource that AI systems can reference.

Addressing Consumer Concerns Through AI-Ready Content

One particularly valuable insight emerged around product reviews and addressing consumer concerns. Unfortunately, brands no longer have the ability to respond to customer reviews on Amazon anymore.

The solution? Using your brand website to address common issues that appear in reviews.

Lauren pointed out that Rufus now provides a shortcut to identifying these concerns: "Under the images, there's Rufus questions, that are probably some of the top questions consumers are asking about your product. And if you're not addressing those questions on your brand website, that's a huge outage."

The Future: AI Agents as the New Shoppers

Perhaps most intriguing was our brief discussion about AI shopping agents – a topic so vast we agreed it deserves its own episode. As Lauren explained:

"You can expect in the future that the new shopper will be an AI agent instead of a person. A brand now needs to think about – how does that agent pick your brand? The retailer needs to think about – how does that agent pick your retailer website? Because the human will be completely out of that loop."

This represents perhaps the most profound shift in retail since the advent of e-commerce – when AI agents become the primary decision-makers in the purchase process, optimizing for them becomes the new marketing frontier.

Moving Forward with Confidence

As we wrap up this segment of our series, it is so overwhelming with possibilities that it can feel a little overwhelming to consider where to start. But I think back to some of Lauren's advice from earlier in the series, such as setting small weekly goals to learn about AI – both personally and professionally – which can help brands and marketers build the knowledge and confidence needed to navigate this rapidly evolving landscape.

If you haven't checked out the previous episodes in this series, I encourage you to do so to build a comprehensive understanding of AI's role in transforming retail.

Part 1: AI literacy

Part 2: practical first steps

Part 3: what the heck is agentic AI

Part 4: selecting solution providers that go beyond the AI hype

And a big thanks again to Lauren Schiavone for joining me for this series! Be sure to follow Lauren on LinkedIn for more retail-focused AI insights.