As large language models (LLMs) increasingly become the go-to search platform for consumers, new research from agency Tangerine highlights that 39 percent of shoppers make purchases directly from AI recommendations.
The whitepaper, made in collaboration with Censuswide, asked 2000 adult consumers how they engage with AI tools for shopping needs. The research findings showcase how consumers trust AI product recommendations, and how LLMs are now a serious discovery channel that marketers must pay attention to.
Nearly half of consumers change a prompt question created by themselves instead of switching to another platform if an AI response isn’t exactly what they’d hoped for. This indicates that consumers often take responsibility for ‘hallucinations’ – when AI generates false or misleading information – instead of attributing fault to the AI tool they’re using.
Younger consumers tend to trust AI recommendations the most, with almost half (four-in-ten) saying AI tools serve as a primary source of information for them. The report also found that product recommendations from Google’s AI Overviews outperforms recommendations made by an influencer.
AI as an “Invisible Influencer”
The research findings point to a wider trend of consumers trusting, and acting on, the first recommendation they receive from an AI tool, posing some new challenges for brands around discovery if they’re not surfaced first.
Brands rank highly in AI search results based on how well a model can find, understand and trust its information. Factors like data accessibility, media coverage, customer reviews, and how relevant a product is to a user’s prompt all play a major role.
“AI is becoming the UK’s invisible influencer,” says Tangerine’s head of digital innovation Anna Rashid. “Consumers are already using AI-generated answers to help decide what to buy, who to trust and where to look next. Our data shows that, if they get the right answer, they often don’t look anywhere else.”
Indeed, consumers appear to trust AI recommendations so much that reports from Adobe indicate higher conversion rates through AI tools than traditional channels, with AI recommendations converting 42 percent better.
“That should be a wake-up call for brands and agencies,” Rashid continued. “Visibility can no longer be judged only by where a brand appears in search results or how it performs on social. Increasingly, the question is whether it appears in the answer itself, and whether the information around that brand is strong enough, consistent enough and trusted enough to be recommended.”
