A leap in AI-based search: Consumers are switching to buying via chat
A new Salesforce report reveals that traffic to shopping sites referred from AI users has quadrupled: "If retailers' products are not adapted for agents - they will simply disappear from the map."
Salesforce, the global leader in Agentic CRM, is publishing its fourth State of Commerce report, based on a survey of 3,450 professionals and 4,690 consumers, alongside behavioral data from more than 1.5 billion shoppers worldwide. The report shows that the market is at a turning point: 78% of organizations are already using some form of artificial intelligence, and while less than a third currently use Agentic AI, nearly half of them plan to implement it in the next six months.
According to the findings, traffic to sites referred from AI tools has increased in the range of 150% to 428% year-over-year in every quarter measured. At the same time, the rate of shoppers who discovered products through traditional search dropped by 15%, while the rate of consumers who chose new purchasing channels — such as AI assistants or apps — grew by 38%.
86% of retailers agree that large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Gemini will become a central conduit for product discovery in the coming year.
"The customer journey no longer starts with traditional search engines, it starts with a chat," explains Liran Shechter, VP of Digital Sales at Salesforce Israel. "When the customer arrives at your arena, the AI has already done the filtering for them and made the decision. If you were not part of the answer that the AI returned to them in the first moment — you have become invisible. We are witnessing the next historical transition in digital commerce — from passive web search to active conversation with AI. The sharp increase in Agentic Search shows that the consumer expects to receive answers, recommendations, and actions in real-time, not just a list of links."
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The infrastructure gap and the organizational challenge
In light of the change, many organizations are already working to adapt product content to natural language queries and AI search platforms. However, the report points to operational obstacles: 78% of retailers report that their number of suppliers has increased in the last two years, and only 27% of organizations say their customer data is fully unified across all functions.
Among those managing fragmented data, 40% admit to slow responses to customer issues and 39% struggle to measure the impact of their commerce investments. Additionally, only 32% of organizations have fully defined KPI metrics for success in the field of artificial intelligence.
