Brand First: How Retailers Win Hearts, Wallets & The Algorithm

Forbes

16-07-2025

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Showing up where your shoppers actually look has always been tough—and today it's tougher. Search isn't what it used to be; you can't rely on keywords, links, or banner noise to climb the results. Discovery now flows across search engines, social feeds, retail media networks, marketplaces, and AI assistants that stitch signals together in real time. In this AI‑curated path to purchase, retailers win by being smarter—not louder—through structured data, credible content, and a clear, consistent brand that shoppers trust and algorithms surface.
Generative AI enters the conversation
Generative AI (gen AI) is reimagining the digital shopping experience by making the product search experience conversational. It used to be that consumers searched for a brand or a product by using brand names, or information such as pricing to pull up results. But now, they can ask for advice and recommendations.
Accenture's recently published Consumer Pulse Survey of more than 18,000 people across 14 countries, found that approximately half of consumers have made a purchase decision with the support of gen AI—making it the fastest-growing source of buying advice in the past year. And for active users— defined as people using gen AI tools at least weekly for personal and/or professional reasons, it's now the second highest source for product recommendations after physical stores.
The survey also found gen AI is no longer just a tool for speed and personalization—it's becoming a confidant and trusted advisor. Accenture's survey found that more than one-third (36%) of active gen AI users now consider the technology 'a good friend,' with a large proportion (93%) relying on it for personal development advice and 1 in 10 calling it their most trusted source for purchase decisions.
When consumers trust AI as they would a close friend, every interaction becomes an opportunity to deepen—or lose—that relationship.
Personalized recommendations
A great example of tapping AI to deeper consumer relationships is AI-powered multi-brand beauty startup, Noli, founded and backed by the L'Oréal Groupe. Noli—which stands for (No One Like I')—is on a mission to empower every beauty consumer with their own intelligent, trusted advisor.
Noli is reinventing how people discover and shop beauty products by addressing the number one pain point for beauty customers—too many options, and lack of unbiased, often conflicting, advice in the market.
Noli cuts through the beauty noise with AI diagnostics trained on 1M+ skin data points and thousands of product formulations. It decodes each user's beauty profile and delivers confident product picks to their door. Co‑Founder & CEO Amos Susskind says, 'Beauty is full of choice, opinions, claims, noise, and emotional stakes, making it the perfect category for personalization and expert guidance.'
Master the large language model ecosystem
It is easy to see how large language models (LLMs) are fast becoming the new influencers. According to Accenture's survey consumers are already using gen AI to inform purchase decisions, making it the fastest-growing source for recommendations.
To avoid being misrepresented, or excluded from consumer consideration entirely, retailers need to take an active role in the LLM ecosystem – a network of models, platforms, and data sources.
Winning now means optimizing for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as well as classic SEO—because AI assistants don't crawl, index, and rank like traditional search; they synthesize, summarize, and represent your brand.
Feed them structured, high‑quality, rights‑cleared content that's current and consistent; refresh it often; tag it so context is clear; and monitor AI surfaces to correct drift. Do that, and your brand story shows up accurately—and gets recommended—across AI chats, agents, and shoppable answers.
Prepare for Agentic Personal Shoppers
Then there's the newer member of the AI family, agentic AI, a technology that can act autonomously on behalf of consumers—making purchases without the traditional shopping journey. In fact, 75% of consumers told Accenture they are open to using a trusted AI-powered personal shopper that understands their needs.
When shoppers delegate decisions to agentic shopping agents, AI effectively becomes the buyer of record. Traditional retail media—banner ads, paid search slots, even your website—can be skipped as agents source the 'best fit' directly from data feeds, reviews, inventory, and price APIs. That's the threat: a frictionless race to the lowest acceptable price.
The opportunity? Make sure your brand carries machine‑readable reasons to choose you—quality signals, experience benefits, sustainability creds, fit/usage guidance, service guarantees—that matter to humans and to their agents. Give AI more to weigh than price, and you stay in the basket.
The trust imperative
Consumers are sceptical: 41% say AI content can feel inauthentic and 45% say it lacks a human touch (Accenture). Trust hinges on transparent, consent‑based data use—shoppers are used to tuning their own recommendation feeds and don't want their data repurposed in ways that surprise them.
Protect that trust with strong cybersecurity and data governance. Keep humans in the loop so AI reflects brand values and delivers the service customers expect. The win: AI experiences that are personal and trustworthy sustained by ongoing investment in tech, training, and teams that keep great retail brands real.
The time to act is now
The investments retailers and brands make today will determine whether they remain visible, relevant, and indispensable in an AI-driven world of tomorrow. While some retailers debate whether to embrace AI, others are already reshaping the industry by using AI to become more empathetic, more responsive, and more valuable to consumers than ever before. But they'll do so while maintaining the human touch—be that the store associate or customer service agent—that makes brands memorable and meaningful. The question is: will your brand be among them?