- Accenture’s 2026 Consumer Pulse Research surveyed 25,590 consumers across 16 countries.
- 74% said they would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make a purchase on their behalf.
- 32% would let an AI agent make a purchase decision within defined limits like budget and brand.
- Consumers favor delegating repetitive, low-risk tasks while keeping approval over final purchases.
What Happened
Consumers are increasingly willing to let AI agents handle shopping, according to new research from Accenture. Its 2026 Consumer Pulse Research, based on a survey of 25,590 consumers across 16 countries, found that 74% would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make a purchase for them.
Accenture defines an AI agent here as software that can act within set permissions — shopping, negotiating, resolving complaints, managing subscriptions, and in some cases completing purchases.
Why It Matters
The finding marks a shift from chatbots and search toward delegated action, the same capability being built into models like Alibaba’s Qwen3.7-Plus and consumer agents such as Meta’s Hatch. Consumer trust is the gating factor for whether agentic commerce becomes mainstream.
Technical Details
The survey distinguishes three tiers. 74% would allow an agent to handle routine tasks — deal negotiation, complaint resolution, subscription renewals, and reorders. 32% would go further and let an agent make a purchase decision within limits such as budget and brand, with the consumer reviewing before payment. Accenture labels this “delegated decision-making,” distinct from task execution and from fully autonomous purchasing, where appetite is smaller.
Who’s Affected
Retailers and marketplaces face a future where the “customer” is increasingly software acting for a person, reshaping search, pricing, and loyalty. Payment providers and brands must design for agent-mediated transactions rather than human browsing.
What’s Next
The data reflects stated willingness, not behavior, so actual adoption will lag intent. The threshold to watch is the move from delegated task execution to approved purchasing — the point at which agentic commerce starts to move real revenue.
