PSE Consulting has found that AI shopping agents have not sidelined merchants, despite fears raised by Amazon's suit against Perplexity AI.
A new report from PSE Consulting, drawing on a survey of 4,250 consumers across the UK, the US, France and Germany, suggests that merchant concerns about AI agents cutting them out of transactions are not currently supported by consumer behaviour. While AI tools are increasingly shaping the shortlist of products consumers consider, the research indicates that established marketplaces and brands continue to handle the final sale.
Discovery versus checkout
The study found that 89% of consumers consider it important or very important to recognise a seller's brand when acting on an AI recommendation, and 92% cite customer reviews as a deciding factor. According to PSE Consulting, these remain the same trust signals that have long governed purchasing decisions, now applied within a newer discovery channel. Just 14% of consumers say they simply follow an AI assistant's top recommendation without further consideration, compared with 32% who cite price as their primary decision driver, which PSE Consulting interprets as evidence that most consumers use AI tools to compare offers rather than to delegate the purchase decision itself.
Consumer reliance on marketplaces also appears stable: 90% expect their use of retail and travel marketplaces to stay the same or increase as AI adoption grows, with only one in ten anticipating reduced use.
The research was commissioned partly in response to Amazon's lawsuit against Perplexity AI, which alleges that the startup's Comet browser disguised AI agents as human shoppers when purchasing on Amazon's platform. PSE Consulting frames the case as a dispute over control of the discovery layer rather than proof that consumer loyalty has shifted away from merchants.
Implications across the ecosystem
For merchants, the findings point to a shift in competitive focus towards visibility within third-party AI systems rather than solely on-site engagement. Consumers favour independent AI assistants, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, for discovery (74%) over tools embedded in a single retail platform (10%). Loyalty programmes also remain a factor: in the UK, 36% of consumers say losing loyalty points would discourage them from using AI shopping tools, compared with 14% in Germany.
For payment service providers, acquirers, issuers and card schemes, PSE Consulting notes that authentication and liability questions are already being tested in practice, as fraudulent actors exploit human-in-the-loop AI shopping models through bot activity and fraudulent listings.
For AI platforms, the report describes an emerging tiered market: 43% of consumers accept advertising-influenced recommendations from free assistants, while 27% would prefer to pay for an impartial alternative. Additionally, 40% say advertising reduces their trust in AI recommendations, rising to 48% in the UK and 50% among consumers over 55.
A PSE Consulting representative said the evidence suggests fears of merchants being cut out of transactions are currently unfounded, though the competitive contest has moved further upstream into the AI discovery layer.
