Who wins the basket when AI does the shopping?

EY teams are working with retailers and suppliers to think deeply about how AI-powered shopping will influence customer strategy, technology, data, product, marketing and commercial models.
 

What happens when shoppers no longer do the shopping? translates some of that thinking into practical priorities for retailers and suppliers to consider: what to do now, what to prepare for next and what to keep in view beyond.

The human behind the basket

The research gives us signals, rather than clear signposts.
 

Shoppers want AI to deliver value. They want to retain control while trust is being built. Routine, repeatable categories are easier to delegate. Younger and AI-familiar shoppers are likely to move earlier. And the existing fragmentation of grocery shopping gives AI a genuine problem to solve.
 

But we do not yet know how quickly assistance will become autonomy, or how that shift will play out across different shoppers, products, platforms and price tiers. We don’t know how agents will reshape logistics or commercial relationships between retailers and suppliers.
 

And perhaps most importantly, we don’t know where control and influence will sit when the decision-maker is partly machine.
 

As shoppers selectively hand over more decisions to AI, understanding the human benefiting from those decisions becomes more important, not less. When AI chooses what goes into the basket, businesses need to know who the basket is really for.