LLMs have become one of the most powerful forces in commerce. Shoppers are using ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and others to research products, compare options, and make purchase decisions—often without visiting your website until they’re ready to purchase (or at all).  

To understand how this shift is playing out, Rithum and Industry Dive surveyed 1K+ U.S. and U.K. online shoppers.  

As 2026 began, consumers across the EU-5 —France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom— reported a familiar mood: cautious and somewhat restrained in their spending plans, largely unchanged from the end of last year. What may be changing more quickly, however, is how they shop. For the first time in our ConsumerWise survey, we explored how consumers are using AI (specifically, gen AI) tools for shopping to research, compare, and plan purchases. We found that adoption varies across markets: Italy had the largest share of consumers reporting AI usage (nearly 74 percent of consumers reported using AI in the last three months), followed by the United Kingdom (67), Germany (66 percent), France (63 percent), and Spain (59 percent). In the United States, meanwhile, 68 percent of consumers said they used at least one AI tool in the last three months.

A new survey shows that European consumers are using AI to shape what they buy, but not how they buy—at least not yet. Before a European consumer purchases a product, an AI tool may already have narrowed the field to three options—and explained why one of them failed to make the cut.

This is the near-term reality of agentic commerce: AI-mediated discovery and evaluation are scaling quickly, even as full autonomy remains limited. While fully autonomous bots are not buying everything on our behalf, AI is fast becoming the primary interface for discovery, comparison, and recommendation—the point in the consumer journey where preferences form and winners emerge. The stakes are considerable: McKinsey research estimates that by 2030, agentic commerce could orchestrate $3 trillion to $5 trillion globally,¹ as AI agents increasingly influence discovery, decision-making, and transactions across categories. Given Europe’s share of global consumption, even moderate adoption scenarios would translate into material impact across European retail and consumer sectors.

The RetailX UK500 2026 is our 12th annual report evaluating the performance of retailers, brands and marketplaces selling in the UK. Looking beyond simple turnover or traffic, the UK500 measures how retailers, brands and marketplaces deliver value across the entire retail ecosystem. It is a listing that takes into into account evolving consumer behaviour, economic headwinds and disruptive technologies such as AI.

Expanding into a new region is a defining moment for small and medium businesses, it signals ambition and growth—but it also comes with risk. Budgets are tight, time is limited and every decision carries weight. Yet too often, business expansion strategies are built on assumptions, fragmented data or high-level visibility. When the margin for error is so small, assumptions become costly.

This report brings clarity to the process with industry benchmarks, deep dives into Beauty industry and how to build a successful market expansion strategy.

Expanding into a new region is a defining moment for small and medium businesses, it signals ambition and growth—but it also comes with risk. Budgets are tight, time is limited and every decision carries weight. Yet too often, business expansion strategies are built on assumptions, fragmented data or high-level visibility. When the margin for error is so small, assumptions become costly.

This report brings clarity to the process with industry benchmarks, deep dives into Fashion industry and how to build a successful market expansion strategy.

At first glance, the world seems to be pulling apart. But the data tells a different story. The world is not disconnecting – its connections are evolving. Explore the latest findings in the 2026 DHL Global Connectedness Report. The world finds itself in a period of profound geopolitical and economic uncertainty. For leaders in both the public and private sectors, volatility has become a part of daily decision-making. In such an environment, assumptions can be misleading – and facts matter more than ever.

Europe is getting harder, not easier. New regulations are changing the rules of commerce, sophisticated fraud attacks are forcing your systems to evolve, and the shifting payment landscape is drowning your operations team in noise.

This friction has a price tag: wasted time, lost sales, stalled growth.

Mollie’s new report gives you the model to automate that complexity away. We show you how to use technology to handle the heavy lifting of routing, compliance, and reconciliation – allowing your human experts to stop fighting fires and start driving new growth.