Consumers are moving quickly, with recent research finding that 68% of UK shoppers have already used an AI agent while shopping.

Yet while customers are rapidly incorporating AI into how they discover products, compare prices and make decisions, many retailers are still struggling to translate AI investments into measurable outcomes, says Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategy & Insights at CI&T.

The absorption gap

With recent research finding roughly 95% of AI initiatives generate little or no measurable impact, this disconnect highlights retail’s biggest AI challenge: not adoption, but absorption.

The absorption gap is the distance between the speed of technological advancement and the speed at which organisations can effectively incorporate it into everyday operations.

Consumers have already moved beyond the AI debate, with CI&T research showing 86% of consumers have either used an AI shopping agent or are open to doing so. Shoppers are using these tools to compare brands, find better prices, reduce research effort and make smarter decisions.

What they value is not the novelty of AI itself, but the efficiency, confidence and value it creates. The challenge now sits with retailers. AI can generate insights, forecasts and recommendations, but those outputs only matter if they influence the daily decisions that shape retail performance.

More data, more decisions, larger gaps

Retail may be one of the clearest examples of the absorption gap in practice.

Customer data often sits across channels, platforms and loyalty programmes. Ecommerce and store operations can remain disconnected. Supply chains are under constant pressure from shifting demand. Merchandising, marketing and operations teams frequently work with different objectives and datasets.

Every day, retailers make thousands of interconnected decisions that determine whether products are available, competitively priced and relevant to customers.

Even when AI produces a more accurate forecast or a valuable customer insight, it can remain trapped within a single team. For customers, that disconnect can appear as out-of-stock products, less relevant recommendations, slower fulfilment or higher prices.

The next step: breaking free from silos

Many retailers are deploying AI within individual functions faster than they are embedding it across the wider business.

Insights generated in areas such as pricing, forecasting, merchandising or customer service often remain confined to those teams, limiting their broader impact.

Technology amplifies the organisation that already exists. If data remains fragmented, workflows remain siloed and teams remain disconnected, AI will simply amplify those limitations.

Retailers that pull ahead will be those that can connect forecasting, inventory allocation, pricing, customer engagement and supply chain decisions into a continuous learning system.

Focus on where value is created

While customer-facing AI innovations often attract the most attention, focusing exclusively on what customers see can mean overlooking some of the most valuable opportunities.

Many of the most impactful AI applications sit behind the scenes.

More accurate forecasting, smarter inventory allocation, stronger supply chain coordination and more responsive pricing strategies may never be visible to shoppers directly. Yet, these capabilities often have a greater influence on customer experience than the latest chatbot or shopping assistant.

Customers ultimately care about finding the right product, at the right price, with the least amount of effort. They value convenience, confidence and availability, not the technology itself.

Retailers should therefore prioritise the AI applications that improve those outcomes, whether or not consumers ever see the systems powering them.

Absorption is the new adoption

Retailers do not need access to different technology to pull ahead. Most already have access to the same tools.

The difference will come from how quickly they can turn those tools into better decisions, stronger operations and greater customer value.

The next era of retail competition will be defined less by who deploys the most visible technology and more by who can continuously learn, operationalise change, and evolve with it to close the absorption gap.