Consumers Want AI to Find Them the Best Price

Consumers want some real savings out of AI use while shopping: In a recent Statista Consumer Insights survey published in the Statista Consumer Reality Update 2026, 44 percent of Americans say they wanted AI to compare prices and find them the best value for money.

In this scenario, however, U.S. consumers have already made up their minds about the product they want to purchase. In terms of AI helping with these decisions, 41 percent said they were open to discovering new products to purchase via AI and 34 percent said they were even willing to pay more if AI made a good case for a product. 39 percent said that AI recommendations made a purchase more likely.

Overall, the survey showed that consumers were actually hesitant to let AI make decisions for them instead of just helping with them. 42 percent said they would not trust AI to make these decisions and the remaining share would only do so in certain categories, the largest being clothing and accessories at 27 percent saying they would AI carry out a purchase on its own.

Only 37 percent said they had made a purchase based on AI recommendations in the past year, with 16 percent having made one such purchase and 21 percent having made more than one.