This week, I'm sharing snippets of a conversation from The Watson Weekly, one of my favorite podcasts, where host Rick Watson sat down with Holden Bale, Global Chief Strategy Officer at Merkle. One statistic mentioned completely stopped me in my tracks: 11% of consumers believe they've already purchased products directly through AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini. Even though, in most cases, that simply isn't possible.

What fascinated me wasn't that consumers are wrong: it's why they're wrong. We explore what this tells us about the future of AI-powered shopping, why perception may matter more than transaction data, and how today's "halo effect" could shape tomorrow's commerce landscape. We also dig into one of the biggest challenges facing AI assistants: building enough personal context to become truly useful shopping companions.

This episode is sponsored by GrowthLoop

Timeline

00:00 – Why one surprising AI shopping statistic immediately caught my attention

01:26 – The "misunderheard" consumer: why 11% believe they've already shopped through AI

02:18 – What social commerce teaches us about consumer perception versus actual transactions

04:49 – Why consumers believing they shopped with AI may be more important than whether they actually did

06:45 – The missing ingredient for AI commerce: personalization, memory, and shopping context

09:30 – Why marketplaces and order history could determine who wins the AI shopping race

10:46 – A preview of my own experiment using Amazon purchase history inside an LLM

Links & Resources

11% of Consumers Think They've Already Shopped with AI — Here's Why That Changes Everything

Retail Media Breakfast Club

11% of Consumers Think They've Already Shopped with AI — Here's Why That Changes Everything