Pre-register for the full report, Conversational Commerce: From AI to Action, to explore how conversational AI is reshaping decisions, where brands win or lose relevance and what it takes to stay competitive.
Our report, Conversational Commerce: From AI to Action, finds more than seven in 10 consumers say they would consider completing a purchase inside an AI chat app, including payment. For many, conversational environments aren’t just places to ask questions. They are where shopping journeys begin, narrow and increasingly conclude.
What makes this shift easy to miss is that little appears broken. Traffic still arrives. Conversions still happen. But the moments where customers weigh options, test assumptions and form preference are moving upstream into conversations that sit outside most brand-owned channels.
As a result, brands are often entering the journey later than they think, with fewer opportunities to influence the outcome. By the time a website or app gets opened, direction may already be set.
Conversational commerce is no longer emerging. It is taking root quietly, unevenly and faster than most commercial models have adapted.
- For leadership teams: The risk is not declining performance metrics but declining influence. Customer decisions are increasingly shaped earlier and elsewhere, long before brands believe the journey has begun.
Conversations are becoming the front door to commerce
Consumers are spending more time inside AI chat apps, and they are doing more there than searching or experimenting.
More than nine in 10 consumers now use conversational AI tools regularly. These interactions are purposeful. People use them to clarify needs, explore alternatives and understand trade-offs, especially when decisions feel complex or risky.
These decision moments matter commercially. This is where customer objections get met and confidence grows. In other words, it’s where customer preference takes shape.
In our research, nearly one in three consumers say they prefer to start in an AI chat app when they need help shopping or getting support. More than half already use these tools to narrow options and move toward a choice.
By the time a customer enters a brand-owned channel, the journey is often already in motion.
- For leadership teams: This is where commercial advantage is now created. Brands that fail to show up at these early decision moments are losing the opportunity to shape intent and confidence when it matters most.
Customers are ready to buy inside conversations
More than 70% of consumers say they would consider completing a full purchase inside an AI chat app. For customers, the appeal is straightforward: speed, continuity and the ability to move from question to action without restarting the journey elsewhere.
What slows this momentum is confidence.
Payment security, data privacy and accountability remain decisive factors. Customers want to know who is responsible for the transaction, how their data is handled and what happens if something goes wrong. When those answers are unclear, the purchase pauses, even if intent is high.
- For leadership teams: This shifts the challenge for brands. Growth will not come from convincing customers to buy in conversational environments. It will come from removing the barriers to trust that interrupt the momentum of intent.
Trust is the missing link
As conversations move toward transactions, customers look for signals of authority and legitimacy.
Generic AI guidance is useful for exploration. When money enters the equation, people want brand-backed answers. They want pricing they can rely on, policies that apply, commitments that feel enforceable.
In our study, more than 40% of consumers say they would actively use an official brand AI agent inside their preferred AI chat app. These agents signal accountability and help convert conversational momentum into confident action.
The absence of such presence has consequences. Nearly one in five consumers say they would switch brands or abandon the task if their preferred brand did not offer an official conversational experience.
- For leadership teams: Trust needs to be conveyed through visible brand accountability at the moment of decision.
Buying journeys are being redistributed across environments
Customers now distribute buying tasks across environments based on what feels most effective in the moment:
- Conversational AI supports early exploration, comparison and orientation.
- Brand websites and apps remain essential for authentication, account context and payment.
- Service teams step in when reassurance or judgment is needed.
What matters is how these environments connect.
When conversations end abruptly and customers are forced to restart elsewhere, momentum is lost. When context carries forward from chat to checkout to fulfillment, purchasing feels natural.
This is where orchestration becomes a commercial capability. Conversational commerce works best when decision-making environments connect cleanly to transaction and fulfillment systems, rather than operating as isolated touchpoints.
- For leadership teams: The commercial differentiator is how seamlessly context, confidence and continuity travel across channels.
The gap between customer behavior and brand readiness is growing
Customer expectations around conversational buying are advancing faster than most brand implementations.
Fewer than 5% of consumers describe brand conversational experiences as state of the art today. At the same time, more than half say their ideal brand experience would be guided or fully conversational within the next year.
This gap often goes unnoticed. Customers do not always complain or abandon visibly. They adapt. They rely more heavily on conversational tools to decide. They arrive later in the journey with preferences already shaped.
Or they just never arrive at all.
- For leadership teams: This is why the maturity gap is so difficult to detect. Customers adapt quietly. They form their preferences and make their decisions in environments that brands do not yet measure or manage.
What does conversational commerce demand from brands?
Brands that succeed at conversational commerce are focusing on a few core principles:
- Treat conversational AI as part of the commercial journey, not just a support feature.
- Design trust into conversational transactions through clear accountability and governance.
- Establish official brand presence where conversational buying already happens.
- Connect conversations seamlessly to websites, apps, payments and service operations.
- Invest in execution that supports buying, not just interaction.
The opportunity is in supporting how customers already want to move, from question to confidence to purchase, inside conversations.
When conversations become the path to purchase, the brands that enable buying there will shape outcomes. The rest will meet customers later, after many of the decisions have already been made.
