Retail’s AI Ambitions Are High. Their Data Readiness Isn’t

Artificial intelligence has become the centerpiece of 2026 retail planning, promising lower costs, faster decisions, and more personalized experiences. Consumers are on board, showing growing interest in tools like conversational AI and purchase agents. However, even as 90 percent of retailers say they’re using AI, a recent Amperity survey reveals that only 11 percent are ready to scale it. The main roadblock? Customer data.

High Hopes, Limited Readiness

Retailers see big potential in AI. Sixty-three percent believe it will improve customer loyalty, and 65 percent expect it to increase lifetime value. Yet fewer than half (43 percent) are using AI in customer-facing applications like personalization, targeted marketing or on-site chatbots. Even fewer — just 23 percent — are using it to prepare and connect customer data, the foundation for any intelligent system.

This signals a major disconnect. Retailers clearly see the potential of AI for customer experience (CX), yet few are structurally prepared to deliver it. Most are still navigating incomplete data and siloed systems, with 58 percent citing fragmented data as their top challenge. High costs (46 percent) and limited technical expertise (35 percent) also remain barriers.

What Retail AI Leaders Do Differently

There’s good news: the research also highlights what distinguishes successful AI adopters from those still spinning their wheels. Retailers with unified, real-time customer profiles are nearly two times more likely to have deployed AI across multiple customer-facing functions, from marketing and customer service to omnichannel personalization.

This isn’t about having the flashiest models or the largest data teams. It’s about having a connected data foundation that gives AI the right context to work with. When customer data is consolidated and identity-resolved into meaningful profiles, AI tools can act on those profiles and generate the insights, predictions and automations to help brands stand out to their customers.

AI is Only as Good as its Data

The unsurprising bottom line: AI is only as effective as the data behind it. Retailers are increasingly deploying generative AI to personalize offers, automate content, and enhance customer service. However, without trustworthy customer profiles, these strategies can easily misfire, delivering irrelevant messages or misidentifying loyal customers. And as consumers grow more aware of AI, their expectations for accuracy and personalization are rising and tolerance for hallucinations and misinformed communications are lowering.

That’s why data readiness has become a competitive advantage. As retailers plan for 2026 amid inflation and tighter margins, AI offers a path to efficiency and growth, but only if it’s powered by customer data that’s complete, connected and current. Incomplete and lagging customer profiles don’t just slow down AI; they undercut return on investment. To scale AI effectively, retailers must first close the customer data gap.

Closing the Gap Between Vision and Value

Nearly all retailers surveyed (97 percent) plan to grow or maintain AI investment in the next year. But investment alone won’t deliver results. To make AI efficient and scalable, retailers need to:

• Audit their data systems. Identify silos, gaps and outdated infrastructure.
• Unify customer data. Use platforms that can resolve identities and connect records across channels and systems in real time.
• Deploy AI where it matters. Focus on practical use cases like personalized promotions, churn prediction and activation decisioning.
• Upskill teams. Ensure teams can interpret, act on and govern AI-driven insights.

Retailers aren’t short on AI ambition, but without a data foundation that supports speed, scale and accuracy, even the best strategies will stall. As 2026 planning takes shape, now is the time to close the gap between vision and value. Retailers that invest in trustworthy customer data today will be best positioned to deploy AI that truly delivers in moments that matter — this holiday season and well beyond.

Alfred Sin is the head of personalization at Amperity, which enables merchants to use AI to build and activate customer profiles in their data lakehouses.