Generative AI is Revolutionising the Digital Shopper Journey

As GenAI surges in popularity, more consumers are utilising GenAI platforms in place of traditional search engines when searching for products and services to buy online. Thanks to advancements in in-chat payments, consumers are also increasingly conducting transactions directly within GenAI platforms. These developments are forcing brands and retailers to embrace GenAI to an unprecedented degree, powering an extraordinary transformation in digital commerce.

Consumers increasingly use GenAI platforms for product search

 As more consumers integrate the use of GenAI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT into their day-to-day digital regimes, more and more are using these tools instead of traditional search engines when researching products and services to purchase online. Globally, most referral traffic to online retailers’ websites still emanates from traditional search engines. As digital shoppers continue to flock to GenAI platforms, however, the balance of power is rapidly shifting. As recently as September 2024, GenAI platforms accounted for only 0.3% of the aggregate total of GenAI and traditional search engines’ global inbound web referrals to retail e-commerce sites’ product pages. By November 2025, GenAI’s share of inbound referrals had increased to 3.5%, with growth showing no signs of slowing anytime soon.

With GenAI platforms emerging as the new frontier of product discovery online, brands are finding that they must adapt to the new reality. As a result, the old marketing paradigm of search engine optimisation (SEO) – the process by which brands enhance their websites in order to improve their visibility and rankings in search engine results – is rapidly giving way to a new model, dubbed “generative engine optimisation” (GEO), under which brands tailor their online presence to rank more prominently in responses generated by GenAI platforms.

One prominent example of a company embracing GEO marketing is Swiss pharmaceutical company Galderma, owner of the Cetaphil skin care brand. In July 2025, Tara Loftis, Galderma’s global president of skin care, revealed that the company is updating its online product descriptions and refocusing its PR strategy so that AI-driven search surfaces Cetaphil when users ask about sensitive skin. Galderma’s GEO efforts are paying off. In the first nine months of 2025, the company’s online skin care sales grew substantially from the previous year, with huge gains in India, South Korea and Canada. With Walmart and Amazon also reportedly embracing GEO-focused marketing strategies, GEO will increasingly be the norm not just for consumer brands, but for companies of all types – including the world’s largest retailers.

GenAI platforms gear up to offer chat checkout

 As product discovery moves to GenAI platforms and consumers increasingly expect these platforms to handle transactions, the industry is moving towards “chat checkout” – ie the provision of a seamless buyer journey where transactions take place entirely within GenAI platforms.

In September 2025, OpenAI launched an opening salvo in this space by bringing “Instant Checkout” to ChatGPT. Instant Checkout is supported by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a new open standard for merchants developed in collaboration with fintech platform, Stripe. Building on this advancement, in October 2025, PayPal partnered with OpenAI to support Instant Checkout. PayPal will act as both a consumer wallet and a payment processor, handling transactions for merchants using OpenAI’s delegated payments API and the ACP. The ChatGPT-PayPal integration means consumers can move from chat to checkout in a few taps using a trusted wallet. For merchants, it opens a GenAI-native sales channel where products and offers can be surfaced and sold inside ChatGPT, with PayPal handling the complexity of ACP integration and payments compliance.

With GenAI assistants beginning to intermediate more shopping journeys, the next step to leveraging AI visibility for conversion requires ChatGPT’s evolution as a fully powered e-commerce platform. The integration of a trusted digital wallet and payment protocol is unlocking this potential, and other GenAI platforms, such as Perplexity, are now following OpenAI’s lead.

The GenAI revolution in digital commerce is already here

As consumers increasingly come to view GenAI platforms as the default option not only for product search but for actual purchases, GenAI-facilitated transactions are set to explode.

By 2028, GenAI and agentic AI will influence over USD595 billion in global retail e-commerce sales

^{Source: Euromonitor International}

Brands, retailers and hospitality operators that fail to properly take stock of this sea change in digital commerce, by preparing for the GenAI future, risk being left in the dustbin of history.

Read our strategy briefing, Top Five Digital Shopper Trends in 2026, for more analysis of the most important digital shopper trends that will redefine commerce in the year ahead.