AI and consumption, 82% of users use intelligent tools to decide what to buy

This evolution of the purchasing path is reflected in the tendency to delegate the most complex or repetitive operational choices. Almost one in three consumers, equal to 32% of those interviewed, declare themselves inclined to allow a digital assistant to carry out transactions completely autonomously, excluding the need to verify the individual intermediate steps, while a further 23% are open to this scenario in the short term.

This step shifts the axis of industrial competition: brands no longer address themselves exclusively to a human audience, but must structure their information so that it is accessible and interpretable by machines. Consequentially, 60% of organizations actively monitor how AI systems describe their identity, although 22% of managers encounter distortions or lack of accuracy in the generated summaries, which tend to flatten narrative elements in favor of purely comparable data.

Beatrice Agostinacchio, Managing Director of Hotwire for the Italy and Spain area

The redefinition of communication strategies requires companies to fill a still widespread structural and methodological gap. Although 84% of companies consider themselves partially ready to operate in market environments governed by algorithms, only 29% declare an advanced level of preparation. Beatrice Agostinacchio, Hotwire Managing Director for Italy and Spain, analyzed this transition: “The most relevant aspect that emerges from our research is not so much that consumers are using artificial intelligence in their daily purchasing choices, but that they are starting to delegate an increasing part of the decision-making process to technology. This shifts the point of competition: brands must no longer just convince, but be selected by systems that operate according to logics other than human ones. In this new universe, success depends on the ability to be represented clearly and consistently within digital ecosystems. It is a new challenge that poses new logics and whoever is able to embrace them will certainly have a competitive advantage”.