Artificial intelligence can break or make customer loyalty to a brand, according to data published Monday by Adobe for Business.
Based on a survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that more than half (59%) said they’d abandon a preferred brand for an unfamiliar competitor if AI recommended it.
However, AI discovery can also lead to repeat business: 83% of respondents said they continued buying from brands they first discovered through AI.
The findings reflect respondents’ reported experiences and intentions, rather than observed shopping behavior.
“Artificial intelligence can give shoppers a reason to try another brand, even if they’re satisfied with their usual choice,” explained Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst with SmartTech Research, a technology advisory firm in Las Vegas.
“But it’s also an opportunity for brands to win over new customers by demonstrating the power of their products to meet a specific need,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“AI makes it easier for a customer to find a brand they might never have looked for. But loyalty is still earned through the customer’s experience,” added Matthew A. Gilbert, a marketing lecturer at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C.
“AI opens the door,” he told the E-Commerce Times, “but the brand still has to earn the second purchase.”
Eroding Brand Loyalty
Consumers’ willingness to try unfamiliar competitors should concern established brands, noted Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, an advisory services firm in Bend, Ore.
“With 59% of consumers willing to switch to an unfamiliar competitor based on an AI recommendation, traditional brand equity is no longer a guaranteed moat,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“Consumers are increasingly prioritizing personalized fit, value, and utility over brand familiarity,” he continued. “However, brands that optimize their digital presence for AI recommendations can capture market share from established competitors.”
Rob Smith, founder and CEO of Lionfish Tech Advisors, an IT advisory firm in Boston, agreed AI can threaten brand loyalty but not for the reasons most brands think.
“AI is moving loyalty from the logo to the answer,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “For 20 years a brand bought loyalty with shelf space, ad spend and a search ranking. Now a shopper asks one question and gets one recommendation, and 59% of them say they would walk away from a brand they like for one they have never heard of. That is delegation.”
“The shopper has handed the shortlist to a machine, and the machine does not remember your Super Bowl ad,” he continued. “It remembers whatever it can verify about your product today, from your own pages, your retailers’ listings and your reviews, and it weighs all of that again every time someone asks.”
“If your specs, prices and reviews are thin, stale or contradictory, you are invisible at the exact moment the decision gets made. Your ad budget cannot fix that,” he added.
Changing How Loyalty Is Earned
Amy Wees, CEO of Amazing at Home, an e-commerce advisory company in San Antonio, maintained that one of the biggest takeaways from Adobe’s findings is that AI is not necessarily destroying brand loyalty. It is changing how brands earn it.
“For years, brands could rely heavily on familiarity, search rankings, advertising, and repeat exposure,” she told the E-Commerce Times. “AI creates a new layer between the consumer and the brand. Instead of asking, ‘What brands do I already know?’ consumers can now ask, ‘What is the best product for my specific problem?’ That gives unfamiliar brands a much better chance of being considered.”
She advised brands to pay attention to potential loyalty erosion. “But I don’t think the lesson is that loyalty is dead,” she said. “It means loyalty is becoming easier to challenge.”
“If AI can explain why another product is a better fit for the shopper’s exact needs, brand recognition alone may not be enough to keep that customer,” she continued. “That puts more pressure on brands to have a clear value proposition, strong customer reviews, useful content, consistent product information and a genuinely differentiated product.”
Wees added that AI recommendations can help brands earn repeat business. “AI discovery can feel much more personalized than traditional advertising,” she explained.
“The shopper may have described a very specific need, problem, budget, ingredient preference, use case or feature requirement,” she noted. “If AI introduces them to a product that solves that problem well, the brand enters the relationship by being useful rather than simply being visible.”
“If the product delivers on that recommendation, trust transfers very quickly from the recommendation to the brand,” she said.
AI Links Create Another Storefront Entrance
Adobe researchers also found that nearly two-thirds of consumers (64%) click on a direct website link provided by AI instead of searching for a brand’s website.
“If 64% follow the direct link from AI, the homepage matters less as the only front door,” explained Rich Pleeth, co-founder of Finmile, an AI logistics SaaS company in London.
“Product pages need clear pricing, availability, returns and delivery promises because the customer may land halfway through the journey,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
However, Greg Sterling, co-founder of Near Media, a market research firm in San Francisco, questioned the Adobe finding. “This is suspect because it’s an attitudinal or opinion survey and not behavioral data,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“Most consumers do not click on AI links, unless they’re very close to a purchase decision,” he explained. “I would believe that they click on links somewhere in the process, but this number is likely inaccurate.”
“What Near Media data show is that people will do discovery on AI and then will often do brand queries based on an AI recommendation,” he said. “Typically they’re seeking to validate or verify the AI recommendation using Google reviews or to get some additional piece of information the AI did not provide. This is based on a combination of extensive survey and behavioral data.”
Expanding the Consideration Set
Adobe also reported that 62% of respondents said they had bought from a brand they otherwise would not have considered because of an AI recommendation.
“The shopping list is becoming more open to influence,” explained Katherine Black, a partner in the consumer practice of global management consulting firm Kearney.
“Understanding what someone is trying to accomplish gives retailers a chance to recommend products the shopper never thought to search for,” she told the E-Commerce Times.
“That is probably the most interesting finding to me,” added Aaron Hutten, CTO of Studio Science, a design and technology consultancy in Indianapolis.
“AI is not just helping customers find something they were already looking for,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “It is expanding the consideration set. That creates a real opportunity for retailers, especially smaller brands that historically had to spend heavily to compete for visibility.”
“But it also changes merchandising,” he added. “You are no longer only merchandising to a person browsing a category page. You are increasingly exposing products to an agent that is interpreting intent, comparing attributes, and trying to make a recommendation.”
He advised retailers to start asking a simple question: If an AI agent had access to my catalog and a customer described exactly what they wanted, would my product actually be easy for that agent to discover, understand, and recommend?
“If the answer is no,” he said, “that is becoming a commerce problem, not an SEO problem.”
