AI-assisted shopping searches surged about 200 per cent in the last year, reshaping how consumers find products and prompting commerce executives to place aggressive emphasis on scaling AI and cleaning up data, according to recent industry reporting.
Where the shift matters
The statistic comes via coverage of Salesforce’s State of Commerce report and highlights a rapid uptick in what the industry calls agentic AI use — systems that take actions or make recommendations on behalf of users. As shoppers increasingly rely on these tools, the business response has centred on two interlocking priorities: expanding AI capabilities and improving the quality and integration of the data that feeds those systems.
Industry findings cited in the reporting show that 86 per cent of commerce leaders believe AI is raising the bar for customer experiences. At the same time, organisations say they struggle to make that promise real: roughly 61 per cent identified poor data integration as a major obstacle to scaling AI-powered commerce features.
| Metric | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Increase in AI shopping searches (12 months) | ~200% |
| Commerce leaders saying AI raises CX standards | 86% |
| Organisations citing poor data integration as a challenge | 61% |
Platform consolidation aimed at small businesses
Responding to those market pressures, two vendors serving small and medium-sized businesses announced plans to deepen their ties. Thryv, a customer-management and marketing platform, and website-builder Wix revealed intentions to form a strategic partnership that will combine Thryv’s marketing and business-management features with Wix’s site-building tools.
The proposed integration promises a centralised stack for service-focused SMBs — putting websites, online scheduling, digital marketing and payments into a single environment. The move directly targets the practical pain points cited by commerce leaders: fragmented data and the operational complexity of deploying AI across multiple systems.
- Why it matters to SMBs: a unified platform could reduce the need to stitch together disparate tools, potentially improving data flow and making AI features easier to deploy.
- What remains unclear: how deeply the two companies will integrate their data models and whether customers will face migration hurdles or added costs.
Adjacencies and industry response
The broader reporting also notes other moves in the small-business and AI space: product upgrades for Google’s Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), new partnerships such as FreshBooks with Grasshopper, and interest in AI applications in heavy industry like steel. Together, these developments illustrate a market in which vendors are both enhancing AI tooling and seeking commercial arrangements to reach customers who need simpler ways to adopt that tooling.
“AI is raising the standard for customer experiences,”
That observation, attributed to commerce leaders in the cited reporting, captures why the sector’s rhetoric has shifted from experimentation to operationalisation. But the statistics underline a familiar gap: executives want AI-powered experiences, yet many struggle with the mundane, technical work required to deliver them reliably.
For Canadian companies and policy observers, the implications are practical and immediate. Businesses that depend on e-commerce or digital customer acquisition need to assess the quality of their customer and product data before layering on AI features. Meanwhile, vendors building integrated stacks will face scrutiny over how they handle customer data portability, interoperability and costs — issues that matter for competition and for small-business budgets.
The rapid adoption of agentic shopping tools is real and measurable; the harder work — integrating data, ensuring transparency and delivering consistent experiences across channels — is where most organisations will be tested in the months ahead.
