Shoppers say goodbye to the search bar as a quarter of holiday-season buyers begin their journey with AI models

Holiday-season forecasts for late 2026 point to a fundamental shift in digital commerce, with e-commerce sales outpacing overall retail growth as artificial intelligence becomes a direct partner in purchase decisions. According to estimates from Deloitte for the period November 2026 to January 2027, e-commerce is expected to grow annually between 7.5 % and 8.4 %, reaching revenues of $316.1 billion to $318.9 billion. This rise clearly exceeds the projected overall retail growth of 4 % to 4.8 %, amounting to a total market of $1.7 trillion to $1.71 trillion, ahead of the previous season’s $1.63 trillion according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Traditional search engines are losing ground to smart conversational platforms during the early product discovery stage.The shift is confirmed by figures from a report by Bain & Company, which finds that 24 % of shoppers plan to begin their gift- and purchase-search journey using generative AI tools such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude, a jump of 17 % compared with 2025. Deloitte Insights economist Akor Barwa explains that consumers now rely continuously on digital tools to compare options and complete purchases across product categories, making online retail platforms the biggest beneficiary of this new behavior.

The economic paradox this season lies in the simultaneous rise in purchasing power and heightened price sensitivity. While Barwa forecasts personal disposable income growth of 4.5 % to 5.2 % supporting consumer spending, Natalie Martini, Deloitte’s U.S. senior-partner and head of retail and consumer products, observes cautious behavior as consumers seek maximum value by comparing offers and switching quickly between brands and stores to manage their budgets. These behaviors coincide with retailers stockpiling merchandise early this year to avoid potential supply-chain disruptions or tariff changes.

This shift reshapes the priorities of marketing and digital commerce leaders in the Gulf, Egypt and the Arab Levant ahead of major discount seasons.When a quarter of customers shift from text-based search interfaces to generative models for purchase recommendations based on their preferences and budgets, paid-advertising and traditional SEO strategies lose a large share of their effectiveness. Regional platforms that run campaigns for major events such as White Friday and year-end sales find themselves forced to rethink how they index and price product data so it can be discovered directly by AI agents, rather than relying on conventional keyword purchases.

The practical challenge for operating and marketing teams in the region is managing customer acquisition cost. If consumers use generative models that scan offers and alternatives in seconds before committing to payment, brand loyalty weakens against recommendation accuracy and price differentials. Your next step requires auditing price transparency and inventory policies and making product catalogs digitally optimized for intelligent machine reading, because digital sales growth will go to those whose choice appears first in the generative model’s response, not necessarily to the biggest ad spenders.