How AI will Impact Purchase Behavior in 2026

If you’ve had AI on your mind and are curious about what the future holds when in comes to purchase behavior in 2026 then you’ve come to the right place.

Many retailers are already using AI for personalization: product recommendations, tailored promotions, and targeted marketing. In 2025, retailers using AI-driven personalization reportedly saw meaningful boosts in sales (about 2.4x compared to non-adopters). So what’s our Magic 8 Ball predicting for 2026? Simply put, we plan to see these trends amplify!

Over the past few years, AI has stopped being a quirky optional add-on — it's becoming the secret sauce for small businesses that want to shoot for the stars. According to a survey from 2025, AI adoption among US small businesses jumped from 39% to 55% — a stunning 41% increase in a single year!

Even more striking: among companies with 10–100 employees, adoption surged to 68%. And once those tools are in place, folks aren’t dabbling — 63% of current users say they use AI daily. For a small bakery, boutique, or dental business, that’s like having an assistant who answers customer queries, drives sales, and tracks inventory — all before your coffee is brewed and your eggs are looking their sunniest on your morning plate.

So what will the AI landscape look like in 2026 and what can you do to adjust with the latest trends?

For small retailers and e-commerce players, AI is rewriting how they "show up" in front of customers. As more shoppers begin relying on AI-driven assistants and recommendation engines, small businesses that structure clean, intelligible product data — good specs, reliable reviews, and consistent pricing suddenly get to compete with the big players. This means that a mom-and-pop shop online could look and behave like a slick, professional storefront, simply by leaning into good data hygiene and AI-friendly design. If you’re a small business owner reading this, then this is good news for you!

Now — brace yourself — let’s talk about 2026, the dawn of what some are already calling the “agentic shopping” era. The idea: people no longer simply browse. Instead they tell their personal AI agent what they want — “get me cozy winter boots for Boston winters under $120” — and the agent shops for them. Big players like Amazon, Glossier, Feastables, Coca-Cola, and Uber, are already enabling this shift. Recent reporting notes that 57% of consumers using AI say they rely on it for gift ideas, and AI-assisted traffic has surged over 1,200% year-over-year. It will be interesting to see the data following Black Friday weekend (more on that, shortly).

For small businesses, this shift is equal parts a precarious unknown and a lottery ticket. On one hand, your storefront might not matter as much — your product’s meta-data, reviews, and how AI agents perceive value will. This is why utilizing a company like The Scoop Brands that is up to date with SEO and AEO trends, and can keep your website fresh is crucial. By the way, AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization and is the AI version for those who aren’t familiar with the term just yet…

In the dynamic landscape of eCommerce, where consumer purchase behavior is constantly evolving, improving conversion rates is crucial for the sustained success of online brands. One of the best pieces advice that we can give any marketer is to ask yourself, “What do I look for as a shopper? What’s the customer journey look like from friends and family? While converting eCommerce visitors into repeat purchasers isn’t a one-size-fits all strategy, customer data platforms like Braze, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, DotDigital, and Bloomreach enable you to act based on shopper intent across channels to reach the right person at the right time in a way that resonates with them.

By 2026, many shoppers won’t browse websites or compare products manually. Their AI shopping agents (built into phones, browsers, and smart assistants) will:

• Filter products

• Compare price & quality

• Predict satisfaction & returns

• Complete purchases autonomously

What this means for small businesses:
If your product data isn’t clean, structured, and easy for AI to interpret, you simply won’t show up in customers’ recommendations — even if humans would have loved your product.

Machine-Readable Product Data Becomes Key

Your brand story still matters, but AI agents prioritize:

• Clear specifications

• Honest descriptions

• Reliable shipping data

• Strong reviews

• Low return rates

This is SEO for AI — a new kind of discoverability.
Businesses that publish sloppy, incomplete product info will get filtered out automatically.

So what steps can you take to integrate AI into your 2026 business strategy?

• Storytelling and connecting with values emotionally: While AI can do A LOT, as many as 95% of buying decisions are emotional and built subconsciously, relying on feeling rather than logic still goes a long way. Be genuine and tell a story that will resonate with your audience.

• Structured data, SEO, and AEO: This is information organized in a standardized, predefined format that makes it easily searchable and analyzable by both humans and computers. Working with The Scoop Brands SEO experts will go a long way coming into this new era.

• Omnichannel approach: Personalize using a cross-channel strategy to reach your customer at the right time in the right place on the right channel (blogs, email, social media, web push, partnerships, etc.)

• Invest in a strong technology stack: Have a marketing strategy in place that incorporates personalization, segmentation, dynamic content, and a customer data platform that can track and act on shopper needs.
  

Thinking of getting started? The Scoop Brands will set your company up for marketing success so that you can scale your business into 2026 and beyond. So what are you waiting for? Get started with us today!

The Scoop Brands is the best choice for digital marketing services in Boston, Massachusetts, the best marketing company in the South Shore, Needham, Massachusetts, Hingham, Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, and your best local marketing company in Massachusetts as a whole. The Scoop Brands provides digital marketing to Boston, the South Shore, North Shore, Metrowest, Cape Cod, Providence, Worcester, Needham, New England, and other parts of the United States, Chicago, and Canada. We work with business owners, retailers, e-commerce brands, restaurants, dental offices, real estate offices, therapy offices, wellness brands, software companies, & more.