Consumers are rapidly increasing their use of next-generation artificial intelligence to search for products, and retailers are responding, according to the Salesforce fourth edition State of Commerce report. Use of agentic AI search as the first step in the shopping journey has grown 200% year over year, and 86% of e-commerce executives surveyed say AI is raising the bar for customer expectations. In response, e-commerce executive respondents have taken steps including improving product content quality (43%), creating or optimizing content for conversational and question-based queries (42%), submitting data feeds to AI search platforms (39%), and optimizing product descriptions for natural language (39%). Only 28% of e-commerce executive respondents are currently using agentic AI, but 44% expect to use the technology within six months and 21% expect to use it within two years. For respondents using agentic AI this year, primary focus areas include scaling AI across functions or teams (35%) and deploying AI in a limited number of use cases or workflows (26%). Traffic referred from AI chats grew between 150% and 428% year over year in every quarter measured. Between August 2025 and May 2026, the rate of consumer respondents discovering products through brand-owned properties fell 7% and traditional search fell 15%, while the rate of consumers choosing new channels — AI assistants, social media AI, delivery apps — grew 38%. Data are from a double-anonymous survey conducted April 10–June 4, 202