2026 AI and Digital Trends in Retail and Consumer Goods

The Path to AI-Powered Customer Experiences for Retail and Consumer Goods

Explore the top industry insights from Adobe’s 2026 AI and Digital Trends research to understand the actions brands must take now to convert AI investment into personalized, trusted, end-to-end shopping experiences.

Jump to the Top Trends

Section 1

Winning Visibility and Engagement in the Age of AI

Section 2

Scaling AI with Speed and Impact

Section 3

Turning AI Ambition into Consumer Confidence

Section 4

The Bottom Line for Retail and Consumer Goods

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How Retail and Consumer Goods Brands Are Turning AI Ambition into Customer Experience Advantage

The retail and consumer goods industry is evolving as AI increasingly influences how shoppers discover, evaluate, and purchase products. Brands are already deploying AI to drive personalization at scale, optimize workflows, and accelerate content velocity. Meanwhile, one in four shoppers now turn to AI-powered platforms ahead of brand websites when making purchase decisions. To stay competitive, brands must turn AI innovation into agentic experiences that consumers embrace and trust.

This overview explores the Adobe 2026 AI and Digital Trends findings across three critical areas for retail and consumer goods brands: winning visibility and engagement in the age of AI, scaling AI with speed and impact, and turning AI ambition into consumer confidence.

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Retail imagery with an AI callout that reads "Find products for me."

Section 1

Winning Visibility and Engagement in the Age of AI

Retail and consumer goods brands are responding to rising expectations for relevance, leading other sectors in AI-powered personalization and connected consumer journeys. The opportunity now is to extend those gains into conversational experiences, engaging consumers wherever they search, discover, and shop with interactions that are on-brand and in the moment.

Consumer expectations have reset around relevance and speed.

of consumers say a brand has five seconds or less to capture their attention.

of brands say highly personalized interactions that anticipate consumer needs in real time will define breakthrough customer experiences in the next two to three years.

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Consumers say personalized content that feels irrelevant or “off” is the top reason they would stop interacting with a brand.

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Brands are investing in AI-powered personalization at scale.

The industry leads in its use of agentic or generative AI for journey design and omnichannel activation to achieve personalization at scale.

Bar chart showing 63% of retail and consumer goods brands, compared with a 47% survey average.

Over half of brands plan to design distinctive AI agent personalities for different audiences, outpacing the broader survey average.

Bar chart showing 52% of retail and consumer goods brands, compared with a 42% survey average.

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Conversational shopping is becoming the baseline for discovery.

of consumers cite AI-powered platforms as a top source for finding information, making purchasing decisions, and getting recommendations — ahead of brand websites and online reviews.

of brands say their future customer experiences will need to be designed as conversational first.

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Retail imagery with an AI callout that reads "Surface insights."

Section 2

Scaling AI with Speed and Impact

Generative AI is already delivering measurable returns, and brands are pushing agentic AI deeper into both consumer-facing and back-office workflows. But AI ambition is outrunning the data, infrastructure, and organizational readiness required to support it.

Generative AI is paying off across the workflows that drive growth.

Percentage citing “significant” or “moderate” improvements from generative AI in the following workflows:

Volume and speed of content ideation and production

Data-driven decision-making

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Consumer engagement and support (e.g., service interactions)

Revenue growth from marketing initiatives

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Brands are actively deploying agentic AI across both back-office and consumer-facing workflows.

Percentage using agentic AI across the business or in multiple functions for these key workflows:

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Yet scaling agentic AI to enterprise value still faces real headwinds:

cite data integration and quality issues.

cite unclear business case.

cite talent and skills gaps.

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Retail imagery with an AI callout that reads "Validate product fit."

Section 3

Turning AI Ambition into Consumer Confidence

Retail and consumer goods brands are optimistic about AI’s potential to improve experiences, and consumers see the benefits as well. But with comfort around agentic experiences still evolving, brands have an opportunity to build trust through transparency and human oversight.

Brands see significant benefits in AI-powered experiences — and consumers do too.

Percentage agreeing with each statement:

“AI will improve experiences for consumers.”

Bar chart showing 69% of retail and consumer goods brands, compared with 56% of consumers, agree.

“AI will help consumers save money and increase their purchasing power.”

Bar chart showing 62% of retail and consumer goods brands, compared with 49% of consumers, agree.

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Yet the industry may be overestimating consumer readiness for fully agentic AI experiences.

Donut chart showing 57%

believe consumers will want AI agents to become their primary way of interacting with brands — but only 19% of consumers agree.

Donut chart showing 41%

expect consumers to be comfortable with their personal AI agent working directly with a brand’s AI agent — but only 35% of consumers say they’d be comfortable.

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To maintain consumer trust in agentic AI, the industry prioritizes these three actions:

Review card showing a four-star rating and an "AI-generated review summary" label.

Clear disclosure when consumers interact with AI

Chat bubble that reads "I'm Jane, your customer support assistant," next to a customer photo.

Easy escalation to human support

Customer photo with task icons for "Review contract," "Fill out form," and "Send for approval."

Human-in-the-loop review and quality controls

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Retail imagery with an AI callout that reads "Operationalize AI now."

Section 4

The Bottom Line for Retail and Consumer Goods

The path forward requires translating early AI wins into scalable, on-brand experiences that consumers trust.

Brands that rise to meet evolving consumer behaviors, build the foundations to scale, and earn consumer trust in agentic experiences will turn AI ambition into lasting advantage. Here are the top three action items for retail and consumer goods brands:

Embrace conversational, adaptive AI experiences.

More consumers are turning to AI-powered, conversational discovery before brand websites. Advance AI across both fronts to win visibility and earn relevance.

Turn AI momentum into scaled advantage.

Data and measurement readiness, automated content pipelines, and workforce skills separate brands that scale AI from brands stuck piloting it. Build the infrastructure to turn today's momentum into tomorrow's return.

Match ambition to consumer readiness.

Consumers are increasingly embracing AI-powered experiences, but comfort with fully agentic interactions is still evolving. Earn trust through transparency, human oversight, and experiences that feel unmistakably human.

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View more insights from the 2026 AI and Digital Trends research.

Learn more

APPENDIX

Research Methodology

For Adobe’s 16th annual AI and Digital Trends research, Oxford Economics, in partnership with Adobe, conducted global surveys of 3,000 executives and practitioners and 4,000 customers to better understand how organizations are leveraging AI to capture customer interest, build brand loyalty, and augment customer experience (CX) workflows — and how customers are responding to these changes. The surveys were fielded online and via computer-assisted telephonic interviewing (CATI) from October through November 2025. “Retail and consumer goods” refers to a global set of executives and practitioners from organizations in the retail and consumer goods industries. This group makes up 17% of respondents and represents a wide range of business sizes. View the 2026 AI and Digital Trends report for more on the full research methodology.

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cardTitle

AI trends in retail and consumer goods.

CardDescription

Understand the actions retail and consumer goods brands must take to turn AI investment into personalized, consistent, end-to-end shopping experiences.

cardDate

2026-09-22

cardImage

primaryTag

caas:content-type/report