AI Adoption in Retail Is Surging--But Meaningful Business Impacts Remain Limited, New BRG Survey Shows

NEW YORK, Nov. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- In an AI-obsessed world, retailers are racing to highlight their organizations' artificial intelligence adoption and capabilities—but corporate leaders may be overestimating these tools' tangible impacts, according to BRG's new research report AI in Retail: In Pursuit of Meaningful Adoption.

Drawing on survey responses from leading retail executives, the report finds that AI is active in most core functions at nearly half (48%) of North American organizations, primarily for marketing, IT/digital and digital commerce. Generative AI implementation outpaces predictive and agentic AI use, while the most desired outcomes among North American respondents include increased operational agility, cost optimization or reduction, and improved customer experience or engagement.

"AI is widely seen as the retail industry's latest savior, and with good reason," said Murali Gokki, a managing director in BRG's Retail Performance Improvement (RPI) practice. "Yet the real return on investment from these tools isn't only in the capabilities added via AI—but in what it allows them to stop doing. Organizations need to embed AI into a clearly defined operating model, establish robust data governance frameworks and adopt new metrics to measure impact."

Amid a rapidly changing regulatory landscape, AI use policies also are a key factor in successful implementation. Only about half of North American respondents say their AI policies are comprehensive and adaptable to regulatory change. As for risks, the majority of these policies do not encompass workforce impact (47%), transparency (43%), intellectual property (29%) and bias and fairness (29%).

The report also polled corporate leaders in Europe and Asia-Pacific (APAC). Broadly speaking, these respondents reported less AI adoption and lower confidence in their AI policies than their North American counterparts.

"AI in retail can power next-gen customer experiences, streamline product design, support dynamic pricing and forecasting, and much more," explained Ryan Poole, a managing director in BRG's RPI practice. "As our latest report illustrates, executives need to remain hyperfocused on leveraging AI for tangible business impacts and ensure implementation doesn't falter due to poor infrastructure, data quality or operational misalignment."

About BRG Retail Performance Improvement

BRG's RPI team specializes in collaborating with retail and consumer goods businesses to develop tailored strategies, data-driven solutions, operational efficiencies and sustainable growth models. The group continues to make significant investments in AI, digital analytics and data-driven capabilities to help clients not only select the right AI solution, but drive impactful operationalization.

Generative AI is most often leveraged to improve product attribution, simplify workflow, speed up decision-making through reporting and dashboards, analyze processing documents and more. Whether introducing or improving predictive AI, the RPI team prioritizes matching the solution to best serve the existing ecosystem. Overall, BRG's RPI team aims to reduce manual tasks, improve data synthesis and support day-to-day operational dashboards. There is no one-size-fits-all solution—we tailor each solution to the client, with whom RPI collaborates to effectively implement.

To view BRG's new research report AI in Retail: In Pursuit of Meaningful Adoption, authored by RPI managing directors Shawn Ashworth, Murali Gokki, Ryan Poole and Joe Schmitt, click here.

About BRG

BRG combines world-leading academic credentials with world-tested business expertise, purpose-built for agility and connectivity, which sets us apart—and gets our clients ahead.

Our top-tier experts include experienced specialist consultants, industry leaders, renowned academics and leading-edge data scientists. Together, they bring a diversity of proven real-world experience to economics, disputes and investigations; corporate finance; and performance improvement services that address the most complex challenges for organizations across the globe.

Our unique structure nurtures the interdisciplinary relationships that give us the edge, laying the groundwork for more informed insights and more original, incisive thinking from diverse perspectives that, when paired with our global reach and resources, make us uniquely capable to address our clients' challenges.

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SOURCE BRG