While AI recommendations are playing a greater role in consumers’ buying journeys, traditional brand-led trust signals and human influence still drive purchasing decisions, says a new report from PSE Consulting.

Original research of 4,250 consumers from the UK, U.S., France and Germany in its latest report, The Shortlist Economy, showed that 89% of customers still rate brand recognition as a key part of their purchasing decisions when acting on AI recommendations.

Human trust signals still drive buying decisions

Validation from other shoppers remains equally as important, with a further 92% saying customer reviews are a deciding factor, underscoring how human-led trust signals still govern buying patterns, even in an AI context.

The report suggests that, while AI agents are increasingly shaping the shortlist of products consumers consider, they are not displacing the merchants, marketplaces and brands consumers ultimately trust to convert and complete the sale.

“The fear that AI agents will simply cut merchants out of the transaction is, on the evidence of our research, a hallucination,” said Chris Jones, MD at PSE Consulting. “Consumers are using AI to build a shortlist, not to transfer their loyalty to buying from the agent.”

Just 14% of consumers in its poll said they would simply follow an AI assistant’s top recommendation, underlining that most shoppers are using AI to compare offers, not to delegate the buying decision itself.

Forget fighting AI discovery, play for the shortlist

“That doesn’t mean merchants can relax,” Jones continued. “The competitive battle has moved upstream, into the AI discovery layer itself. But the idea that agents are about to replace the merchant relationship altogether isn’t what consumers are telling us.”

Rather than “fighting” AI agents for the sale, PSE Consulting suggests retailers focus on fighting for a place in the AI-generated shortlist.

Consumers heavily favour independent AI assistants, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, for discovery (74%) over tools embedded in a single retail platform (10%). This means visibility increasingly depends on how well product, pricing and trust data are represented to third-party AI systems, not just to human shoppers on-site.

Brand and review signals remain a merchant’s strongest asset once the shortlist is built, with 68% of consumers saying they would consider an unknown seller an AI recommends – but only if they can check reviews and ratings first.