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THE SAY–DO GAP · Q2 2026 REPORT

How Ecommerce Leaders Are Actually Using AI

Get exclusive access to:
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Insights from 140+ ecommerce leader interviews
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~6,000 real AI queries run against live store data
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The AI usage patterns no other report can see
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The four organizational blockers slowing teams down
What they say
 
What they do
“AI agents will shop our site”
→
Diagnose what's broken, fast
“Personalization is solved”
→
Answer the weekly questions no analyst had time for
“We need an AI strategy”
→
Run automations with nobody in the chat
“It's a 2027 problem”
→
Already a year ahead
140+
ecommerce leader interviews
~6,000
real AI queries on live data
1%→65%
of calls mention MCP, in 5 months
1 in 10
AI requests is an automation

A peek at what's inside...

What ecommerce leaders are saying

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"You can't scale chaos. If the foundations aren't right, AI just helps you make mistakes faster."

Mena Wouters
Bazaarvoice

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"After every release, the first thing I do is ask the AI what changed. It used to take half a day to piece that together."

Head of Software Engineering
National eyewear brand

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"I had it audit a vendor we were about to replace. In ten minutes it found what would've taken my team a week."

Founder
Children's accessories brand

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"It doesn't just tell me what's wrong. It connects to the systems and takes the next step. That's the part that changes how we work."

Senior Engineering Leader
National restaurant brand

What leaders are actually doing with it

We analyzed ~6,000 real AI queries run against live ecommerce data. The patterns weren't what anyone predicted.

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Diagnostics, not dashboards

Leaders don't ask for charts. They ask why something happened and what to do about it, then expect an answer they can act on.

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Questions you couldn't answer before

The most common queries cut across data that used to live in separate tools, surfacing answers no single dashboard could.

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Automation, not just answers

Roughly 1 in 10 AI requests is an automation, not a question. Teams are wiring AI into how work actually gets done.

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Persistent infrastructure beats chat

The teams getting the most value don't treat AI as a chat window. They build it into standing workflows that run on their data.

See what ecommerce teams actually do with AI

Not what retailers say about AI — what they actually do with it. Get the full Q2 2026 report.

Download the Q2 2026 AI report