As consumers increasingly lean on AI chatbots for product suggestions, retailers are shifting strategies to keep pace. One direct example is the substantial number of consumers planning to use chat‑based tools this holiday season for shopping. Retailers recognise that their product content and listings serve not only direct shoppers but also the large language models “reading” and interpreting web pages. This means updating product descriptions, imagery and site content may become as much about appeasing AI crawlers as appealing to humans.
That shift elevates content beyond mere efficiency. For example, one large retailer reports that roughly 25 % of its search requests today are descriptive in nature, where a shopper enters a feeling or occasion rather than a simple keyword. Retailers therefore must assume that AI chatbots or agents may act as intermediaries, interpreting and responding to those richer queries.
In response, some retailers are turning AI tools inwards. They’re using generative AI to rewrite product pages at scale where human‑written descriptions were once the norm. That points to a feedback loop: AI scrapes retailer content, retailers optimise for AI, and then AI uses the optimised content in turn. Research shows that AI generated shopper personas may replicate bias fairly quickly, as human participants already bring personal bias into their conversational queries, but AI layers can amplify or distort it further.
itim Group plc (LON:ITIM) is a SaaS-based technology company that enables store-based retailers to optimise their businesses to improve financial performance and effectively compete with online competitors. Itim adds retail value by helping multi-channel retailers optimise their business and their stores to improve financial performance and compete more effectively with the “Amazons”.
