I shop with AI completely differently than I did a year ago. So do your customers.

A year ago, AI felt like a novelty and I rarely used it for shopping. Today it’s the first place I start. That shift happened fast, and if it happened to me (a marketer skeptical of hype) it’s happening to your customers too.

Here’s how it actually shows up for me now. It breaks into three moments.

Consideration: Before I even know exactly what I want, I’m asking AI “What product best meets my explicit needs?”. I don’t start by searching a retailer’s site. I’m having a conversation, and the answer quietly shapes the entire set of products I’ll even look at.

Validation: Once I’ve narrowed it down, I check my own thinking. “Is this product really the best, or just the best-marketed or the one with the best SEO?” I want a second opinion before I spend, and AI gives me one that feels relatively “neutral” (for now).

Post-purchase: After it shows up at my door, the journey continues. “I now own this product. What else works best alongside it?” That is a wide open door, and the brand that walks through it first wins my next order.

And it isn’t only chat tools; it’s agents. Nearly every product I’ve considered lately for retailers like Amazon, I’ve talked to their shopping agents first: “compare these two models”, now “compare them against a different brand”, or “tell me if the reviews point to something I haven’t considered”. It’s engrained now, and the reason is simple – it’s easy.

But, this is all coming from one person, so here’s how Cordial’s Holiday Consumer Survey backs it up. 42% of shoppers plan to use AI somewhere in their holiday shopping this year, and among Millennials it climbs to 54%. But look at where they’ll use it. They trust it to compare prices and deals (43%), compare products and brands (38%), and find gift ideas (34%). What they won’t do is hand over the purchase. Only 6% want AI to actually complete the buy, and 32% are very uncomfortable with the idea at all. So am I.

My point: AI has become the shopping brain. Your customers are letting it help them decide. Which means the fight this year is for the consideration set. You win by having the product that AI surfaces, the brand it validates, and the next thing it suggests.

So what do you actually do about it?

Two things are true at once. You can’t control what ChatGPT, Claude or Alexa says about you, though you should absolutely be feeding those tools clean, rich product data so you show up well when they provide an answer. But the personalization you fully control are the product recommendations and content inside your own email, SMS, and push messages. Those now have to be as sharp as the AI your customers are using everywhere else. If your messages still promote the same hero product to your entire file right after your customer just took very specific actions on your website or within a CRM channel, you look a step behind. Because you are.

This is where Cordial’s AI Product Recommendations V2 earns its place. It predicts the next product each contact is most likely to want, and it does it for your whole file, not just the people who happened to browse yesterday. It even covers the contacts who haven’t clicked or bought in 90 days, the exact shoppers a generic batch message talks right past. That is your version of the “What other products should I consider?” moment, delivered before your competitor gets there.

Now pair it with price sensitivity, and you have the real 2026 play. Instead of blasting a blanket discount to buy attention, you lead with the right product for each person and reserve the deep discount for the shoppers who actually need it to convert. Personalized, predicted recommendations will drive more value this season than another point off your margin.

AI made my shopping smarter in a single year. It did the same for your customers, whether or not their favorite brands noticed. The brands that win this holiday won’t be the brands fighting that shift. They’ll be the ones whose own personalization is finally as smart as the AI already sitting in their customer’s pocket.