AI Agents: Trusted or Transactional?

Gold Rush

Walmart CEO John Furner told investors on his Q1 earnings call in May that shoppers using the Sparky AI Shopping Assistant spend 35 percent more per order than shoppers who don’t use it. That’s an impressive number. Amazon has reported stronger conversion from AI-assisted shopping. Sensor Tower data reported by Adweek found that 44 percent of app sessions using Alexa for Shopping converted to a sale in July, compared with 34 percent a year earlier under the previous Rufus tool.

Kroger has been expanding its AI-enabled shopping and meal-planning capabilities through Google Cloud. The appeal is obvious: A shopper can begin with a meal intention like “I’m having a BBQ for ten people, one person is gluten free, one is vegan, and another is diabetic, I don’t want to spend more than $7 a person.” Click a button and end up with a cart shaped by inventory, price, loyalty data, dietary preferences, fulfillment options, and suggested add-ons. Cart Happy is a new AI assistant that lives on a browser and acts as a personal grocery shopping assistant, remembering a user’s regular purchases, automatically comparing prices, adding coupons across stores based on a shopper’s zip code. And then it recommends which store to buy which products in what order to build the lowest-cost cart and then moves the products to multiple retailers’ checkout carts. This tool should make every grocer and brand nervous!