47% of retail brands now use AI daily for business operations

Nearly half of retail brands now use artificial intelligence daily or weekly, marking a shift from experimental projects to embedded business operations, according to Amperity’s 2025 State of AI in Retail survey. This mainstream adoption reflects retailers’ focus on measurable outcomes like revenue growth, customer loyalty, and operational efficiency, with 97 percent planning to maintain or increase their AI investments this year.

What you should know: AI integration is becoming seamless across retail operations, from customer data management to personalized marketing campaigns.

• “We have AI embedded across many parts of the business, which makes it feel seamless rather than experimental,” said Daniel Chasle, chief data officer at U.K. fashion brand New Look.
• Companies are using AI for algorithmic customer profile stitching, chatbots for customer service, coding assistance for developers, and daily productivity tools like Microsoft Copilot.
• Retailers with customer data platforms are twice as likely to use AI daily (60 percent vs. 29 percent) compared to those without.

The big picture: The industry is transitioning from “Omnichannel 1.0” to “Omnichannel 2.0,” where AI enables real-time personalization across customer journeys rather than simply maintaining presence across multiple channels.

• Sixty-three percent of retailers believe AI will improve customer loyalty, while 65 percent expect it to increase customer lifetime value.
• However, only 43 percent are currently applying AI in customer-facing applications, indicating cautious adoption despite high expectations.

Key challenge: Fragmented customer data remains the biggest obstacle, with 58 percent of retailers reporting incomplete or disconnected customer information.

• “The challenges are the acquisition of the data from the disparate systems and knitting the data together to give a consistent view of the physical customer behind the data,” Chasle explained.
• Only 23 percent of retailers currently use AI in production to resolve customer identities or prepare marketing data.
• Data fragmentation increases IT costs, delays decision-making, and complicates personalization efforts.

Success story: New Look’s data unification strategy demonstrates the potential returns on AI investment.

• By combining an enterprise data platform with Amperity’s identity resolution technology, the brand identified nearly 26 percent more high-value customers than previously recognized.
• The unified customer profiles now power real-time marketing campaigns, paid media optimization, and customer relationship management improvements.
• “The newly created Real-time Customer Profiles with Amperity are already fueling our paid media suppression activity, CRM optimization and will soon start to power a new wave of personalization experiences,” Chasle said.

What they’re saying: Industry leaders emphasize the importance of moving beyond experimentation to embedding AI into core business operations.

• “Every retailer should be experimenting with AI right now. But leaders take it further. They embed AI into the way the business runs,” said Tony Owens, CEO of Amperity.
• “What retailers are really asking for are demonstrable outcomes. They don’t want AI for AI’s sake—they want proof it drives growth. Every use case has to tie back to revenue, efficiency, or loyalty in ways you can measure.”
• “Customers don’t think of themselves as segments or cohorts. They’re on a journey with your brand,” Owens added.

Looking ahead: Personalization represents the next major opportunity, with retailers planning AI-powered styling capabilities and end-to-end customer journey orchestration.

• “By 2026, retailers will start to democratize data across the entire enterprise, using it to orchestrate the customer journey end-to-end,” Owens predicted.
• Despite high investment intentions, only 11 percent of retailers feel strongly prepared to deploy AI tools at scale.
• “This is a defining moment for retail. There will be winners and there will be losers,” Owens warned, suggesting that data mastery will determine competitive advantage.