A Quarter of Your Holiday Shoppers Are Starting in ChatGPT, Not Your Homepage

Every year brings another "biggest holiday season yet" headline, and most of it is noise. This year has one genuine structural shift buried in the forecasts: a meaningful share of shoppers are no longer starting their holiday research on a search engine or a retailer's homepage. They're starting inside an AI chat window.

That's not a minor behavioral footnote. It changes what "being findable" means for a store, and it's happening at the same time holiday spending is forecast to cross $1 trillion for the first time. Here's what this season's actual forecasts, from Bain & Company, Deloitte, the National Retail Federation, and delivery data from Roadie, say, and what it means for what you should be doing with the next few months.

The Season Is Bigger, and More of It Is Online

Bain & Company forecasts US retail sales for November and December 2026 to grow 4.5% year over year, crossing $1 trillion for the first time, with inflation accounting for over half of that nominal increase. "While US retailers have reason to rejoice this holiday season as the industry reaches the trillion-dollar milestone for the first time, there are underlying factors that will temper bottom lines," said Aaron Cheris, partner at Bain & Company and global head of the firm's retail practice.

Deloitte's separate forecast for the full November 2026 through January 2027 holiday period puts total sales growth at 4% to 4.8%, to between $1.7 and $1.71 trillion, ahead of last season's 4.1% growth to $1.63 trillion (per the US Census Bureau, seasonally adjusted, excluding auto and gas). Deloitte expects eCommerce specifically to grow 7.5% to 8.4%, to between $316.1 and $318.9 billion, meaningfully outpacing overall retail growth. Bain's own consumer survey points the same direction: online sales are expected to rise 9% year over year, versus a comparatively modest 2.5% in-store. Two different firms, two slightly different numbers, the same underlying story: online is growing several times faster than physical retail this season.

Shoppers aren't abandoning stores, though. Bain's survey of more than 1,100 consumers found about 40% plan to split their holiday shopping equally between online and in-store, 24% expect to shop mostly online, and 13% expect to shop mostly in-store. Category matters too: home furnishings, electronics, appliances, and food and beverage are expected to stay roughly flat, while general merchandise, clothing, accessories, and eCommerce are where Bain expects the real price and unit growth to show up.

24% of Shoppers Are Starting Their Search in an AI Tool, Not on Your Site

Here's the number worth sitting with: according to Bain & Company, 24% of holiday shoppers plan to begin their discovery process using AI platforms like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude, up from 17% last year, a 17-point swing Deloitte cited independently in its own holiday forecast as well.

That's a genuinely fast shift, and it means a real and growing share of your potential customers may never see your homepage, your category pages, or your carefully optimized meta descriptions before they've already formed an opinion about what to buy and where. They're asking an AI assistant instead, and that assistant is only going to recommend your products if it can actually parse and trust your product data. Deloitte Insights economist Akrur Barua tied eCommerce's outsized growth directly to this shift, attributing it to "consumers' ongoing use of digital tools to research, compare and complete purchases across all categories."

This is the practical argument for treating structured data and AI-legible content as holiday infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. If your product feeds, schema markup, and content aren't built for AI retrieval, you're not losing a ranking position this season, you're not part of a growing share of the conversation at all. Bain's Cheris put it plainly: "The key for retailers is to make the most of the crucial holiday season by striking the right balance when it comes to price and promotions, and making the most of new AI capabilities to enhance the customer experience and get ahead of competitors." It's exactly the gap our AI Visibility & Generative Engine Optimization service closes.

Value-Consciousness Hasn't Gone Away, It's Just Gotten More Deliberate

Disposable personal income is projected to grow 4.5% to 5.2% during the holiday season, which Deloitte's Barua calls "a strong predictor of retail and e-commerce sales." More income moving through the season doesn't mean shoppers are spending it carelessly, though. "Consumers continue to place importance on making the holidays special for their friends and families, while also making deliberate choices about how they spend," said Natalie Martini, Deloitte's vice chair and US retail and consumer products leader. Deloitte's forecast points to continued value-seeking behavior across income levels this season, including switching between brands and retailers and leaning on promotions to manage spending.

For merchants, that's a specific planning signal: shoppers with more to spend who are still actively comparison-shopping and switching brands based on value are exactly the audience AI-assisted discovery serves well, and exactly the audience a vague or generic product page loses to a competitor with clearer pricing and sharper content. Knowing which channels and promotions are actually driving that switching behavior, rather than guessing, is what our analytics and attribution work is built for.

Same-Day Delivery Is a Trust Signal Even for Shoppers Who Never Use It

A Roadie survey found that nearly three-quarters of consumers consider same-day delivery availability when deciding where to make a purchase, regardless of whether they actually choose that option at checkout. It functions less like a shipping method and more like a credibility signal, evidence that a retailer can actually move fast if a customer needs it to.

The businesses offering it are seeing that show up in real numbers: higher revenue as the option encourages shoppers to complete checkout, higher conversion rates as cart abandonment drops, higher per-order revenue (often tied to a minimum order threshold for same-day eligibility), and more repeat purchases, with more than half of surveyed Roadie customers reporting a return on the investment in under three months. Retailer Blain's Farm & Fleet is one concrete example Roadie points to, expanding delivery options specifically to serve holiday customers. Surfacing a fast-delivery promise clearly at exactly the moment a shopper is deciding whether to check out is squarely a conversion rate optimization problem.

There's an operational catch worth planning around before peak hits. A recent supply chain and logistics survey found retail executives expected a median 93.5% on-time delivery rate, but same-day delivery specifically achieved only an 80% median on-time rate during high-stress peak periods. The gap between offering same-day delivery and reliably delivering on it is exactly where holiday customer service tickets and one-star reviews come from. If you're adding or expanding same-day options this season, the fulfillment reliability plan matters as much as the checkout toggle, which is part of why a growing number of retailers are consolidating onto crowdsourced last-mile networks (Roadie cites its own reach at 97% of the US population) rather than juggling multiple regional providers.

Peak Season Isn't One Peak Anymore

The old mental model, a single surge from Black Friday through the last shipping cutoff, doesn't match how demand is actually arriving. As Roadie's own research puts it, most retailers no longer experience a single peak season, they see "lots of hills and valleys throughout the year, starting the ramp-up as early as July," with summer sales, back-to-school shopping, and other events creating real mini-peaks ahead of the big holiday push.

Retailers are responding by front-loading inventory. According to NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold, "we had an early peak season this year as retailers brought in merchandise ahead of tariff changes in late July and responded to other uncertainties in the supply chain like the ongoing disruption brought by the conflict in Iran." The businesses that planned earliest are already positioned, the ones treating late November as the actual starting line are already behind the planning curve their competitors used. Running coordinated campaigns across each of those mini-peaks, rather than one big holiday blast, is exactly what our email and SMS automation builds for.

What This Actually Means for Your Store This Quarter

• Audit your structured data and product schema now, not in November, since AI-first discovery is already at 24% and climbing
• Stress-test checkout and site performance for a season where eCommerce growth is projected to run several times faster than in-store growth
• If you're offering or expanding same-day delivery, confirm the fulfillment plan can actually hit peak-season reliability (80% median actual vs. 93.5% expected is the current industry gap), not just off-peak reliability
• Sharpen pricing and promotional clarity, Deloitte's data shows shoppers with more disposable income still actively comparing and switching brands on value
• Build campaign and inventory plans around multiple demand peaks (back-to-school, early fall, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, last-shipping-cutoff) rather than one big push
• Review whether your product content actually answers the comparison questions an AI shopping assistant would be asked on your behalf

The Takeaway

None of these shifts individually would justify rewriting a holiday plan. Together, they point at the same underlying change: more of the season is happening online, more of that online activity is starting somewhere other than your site, shoppers have more to spend but are still comparing carefully, and the operational bar for actually delivering on what you promise is getting less forgiving, not more. The retailers who show up well in this season's numbers won't be the ones who spent the most on holiday ads. They'll be the ones whose product data, pricing clarity, checkout, and fulfillment could actually keep up with where demand is already showing up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Your Store Actually Ready for How This Holiday Season Is Shopping?

SnapTec helps merchants get AI-discoverable, stress-test checkout and performance for peak traffic, and build campaign plans around the real shape of holiday demand, not the old single-peak assumption. Talk to our team before peak hits →