AI now shapes a large share of what people buy, and not only online. Research published this week by the MACH Alliance, based on more than 1,000 UK consumers, found that 42% of in-store spending is influenced by AI search, the same proportion as online, rising to 62% among Gen Z. Two in five online purchases are now guided by AI agents, and 67% of shoppers use AI for search and discovery, climbing to 92% of Millennials.
The finding lands as the industry gathers at RetailClub AI Festival 2026, which opens this week in California with roughly 2,000 retail and technology leaders. The event’s theme, moving AI from experiment to everyday operation, now has a clear commercial driver. Consumers are adopting the tools faster than many retailers can respond to.
Created by the founders of Shoptalk and Groceryshop, the festival runs from 22 to 24 September in Huntington Beach, California, with more than 150 global speakers across two stages. Sessions cover customer engagement, commerce, operations and the data infrastructure behind AI decisions. A recurring thread is how retailers move past pilots and get AI working in the systems they already run.
For European retailers the pressure is twofold. Behaviour is shifting quickly, yet a 2025 MIT study found 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots delivered no measurable profit impact, usually because they never cleared the gap between demo and production.
Regulation adds another layer. The EU AI Act began applying transparency rules in August 2026, covering common retail uses such as recommendation engines and dynamic pricing, with GDPR obligations stacked on top.
MACH Alliance President Jason Cottrell said “As AI becomes an influence layer across the entire customer journey, retailers can no longer view AI interoperability through the lens of ecommerce alone – it must span every touchpoint,”.
This topic is firmly on the RetailClub agenda. Among the participants is Nisum, a technology consultancy that helps retailers move AI from trial to operation. One of its sessions, hosted by Sajid Mohamedy, a Nisum board member, looks at why pilots fail to reach production and what separates the projects that survive the next budget cycle.
The MACH data suggests the demand side is no longer the constraint. Whether European retailers can turn that adoption into working, compliant systems, rather than stalled pilots, is now the harder half of the problem.
This article originally appeared in 150sec and was republished with permission.
Featured image: Courtesy of RetailClub
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
