Consumer Pulse Research 2026: Talk to my AI agent

Source: Accenture · 2026

Consumers are handing decisions to AI agents. Brands now need to win both the human and the algorithm to stay relevant.

Consumers are ready to delegate decisions to AI agents, from discrete tasks to fully autonomous agentic purchases.

To win, brands must earn relevance with consumers and trust with their AI agents by delivering value that can be verified, not just promised.

Consumers are overwhelmed by too many choices, too little time and too much fine print. So they are turning to AI agents and going further than most brand leaders expect. Our survey of 25,590 people across 16 countries finds that nearly three in four (74%) would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make a purchase on their behalf.

But consumers are not giving up control entirely. They delegate what feels like hard work and hold on to what carries personal meaning. More than half (56%) would tell their agent which brands to consider, yet 37% of loyal consumers would let an agent switch for a better fit. Among weekly gen AI users, gen AI has already overtaken the physical store as the leading discovery channel. That leaves a key question for every brand: where will value be created, and where will it be exposed?

Once protections are in place, 80% would consider delegating at least one daily activity. And once a consumer trusts an agent, that trust flows to the brands the agent chooses and away from the ones it doesn't.

As consumers delegate more of the decision-making to agents, the rules of value creation are changing. The mistake is to think of AI as just another channel. It isn’t. When agents sit between consumers and brands, they reset what gets bought, when, and how brand value is created.

Seventy-one percent of consumers expect generative AI to influence at least half of their spending decisions over the next 12 months, and 43% put budget and value at the top of their instructions to agents. AI agents will work continuously on the consumer’s behalf: they will break brands down into comparable parts, test claims against reality and steer spending toward the best outcomes. Weak differentiation, inflated pricing and poor fit get exposed instantly. For brands, there is nowhere to hide. But this isn’t only commoditization. Nearly 63% want agents to shop for their “idealized self.” When value is real, agents amplify it. When it isn’t, they surface it.

Sixty-one percent of consumers want an agent that shops across multiple grocery stores. Seventy-one percent want one that plans a complete trip across airlines, hotels and activities. When agents create the shortlist, they direct demand before consumers engage with any brand at all. The moment of choice moves upstream to the decision layer—the standards, data and verification logic that determine what gets chosen. Brands have two options: become the agent of choice, or be chosen by the agent. For brands and retailers building their own agents, the signals are strong: weekly gen AI users are more than twice as likely to want retailers or brands to become the agent of choice than AI-native platforms. The window to decide where to play is open. But the habits forming now will be hard to break.

Consumers now expect brands to feel as helpful and personal as the AI they use.