Why EMEA’s Cost-Conscious Consumers are Turning to AI Agents

By Oliver Wright and Jennifer Ducarre

As EMEA consumers become more value-conscious, 44% say AI is better at finding deals. For brands, that could rewrite the rules of choice.

Nearly three in four EMEA consumers expect their disposable income to stay flat or fall over the next year, sharpening their focus on getting more from every purchase. Increasingly, they see AI as an ally: 44% say it is better at finding deals, while 43% say it compares options more effectively. But value is about more than price. Consumers want AI agents to help them make choices aligned with their budgets, needs and aspirations. For brands, that means proving their value not only to consumers, but increasingly to the agents acting on their behalf.

Why Are EMEA Consumers Turning to AI for Better Value?

Across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), consumers are watching their money carefully. Nearly three in four expect their disposable income to stay flat or fall over the next 12 months. They are scrutinizing grocery bills, deferring discretionary purchases and trying to get the most value possible from every transaction. They are also, in growing numbers, trying to reduce the mental load of those tasks by handing them to AI.

Our research of 25,590 consumers across 16 countries attests. EMEA consumers are adopting agentic commerce in ways that range from AI chatbots that aid inspiration, discovery, and decision-making to AI agents that could shop autonomously on a consumer’s behalf.

68% told us they would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make a purchase on their behalf for at least one type of purchase.

Moreover, 68% told us they would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make a purchase on their behalf for at least one type of purchase. Why? The attraction is clear: Agents promise a sharper way to find value: 44% say AI is better at finding deals and 43% say it compares options more effectively. And across most categories, such as beauty, fashion, telecom, travel, and grocery, EMEA respondents are more likely than the global average on two specific jobs they want agents to do: alert them to good deals and negotiate better terms.

This belief translates into behavior: Thirty-seven percent of active generative (gen) AI users in EMEA have already used AI to save money.^[1] And their appetite extends beyond advice. Nearly three in five want an AI agent to actively shop simultaneously across multiple retailers for the best products or prices in at least one purchase category.

Where might AI agents enter the shopping journey first?

The decision layer is starting to move. Consumers may still ultimately buy through a brand’s store, website, or app, but more of the finding, comparing, and choosing could happen upstream through AI. In EMEA, gen AI is already the number one go-to discovery channel for weekly users. The question, now, is how much of the decision consumers are willing to hand over.

Right now, our research shows that consumers want to keep control of the final call, even as they lean on AI for more of the legwork. A significant majority (81%) of our respondents said they are open to collaborating with an agent. So far, three in 10 would let it choose what to purchase within the boundaries they set.

We also found that consumers draw a clear line between what they will delegate and what they will not. Routine, price-sensitive, and time-consuming decisions sit at the top of the delegation list. Choices tied to identity or personal meaning sit at the bottom. Willingness to let the AI agent shop completely autonomously is confined to a smaller group of AI enthusiasts and varies by the purchase category. For instance, 12% would allow autonomous purchasing for recurring services, but only 6% would do so for travel.

Figure 2: EMEA consumers’ openness to AI agents, by maturity level and purchase type

Until recently, consumer appetite had been ahead of what the technology could deliver. But that gap is closing. Over the past 12 months, agents can increasingly monitor prices, assemble baskets across products and merchants, manage replenishment, and execute checkout. At the same time, emerging payment protocols are beginning to support autonomous transactions within pre-authorized consumer guardrails.

Brands today are working toward being discoverable by large language models (LLMs). But they must now think about how to be chosen by the consumer and their agent.

How will AI agents define value, and what will they choose?

The pursuit of value isn’t simply a pursuit of lower prices. People want AI agents to help them consume better. Sixty percent of EMEA consumers want AI to shop for an idealized version of themselves—sticking more rigorously to a budget, resisting impulse purchases and making choices more closely aligned with the person they want to be. In the UAE, that number rises to 71% while it averages 58% across Europe, with Spain, France and Italy among the markets showing particularly high openness.

Importantly, consuming better doesn’t necessarily mean consuming less. AI can give consumers greater confidence to spend more when the additional value feels justified. Our research shows 27% of active AI users in EMEA say AI has persuaded them to make a more expensive or premium purchase, while 25% say it has prompted unplanned additions to their basket. That coincides with data in the marketplace: Grocery retailers have reported higher average order values and a significant increase in basket size for users of their AI assistants versus other channels.^[2]

The emerging picture is less about AI agents relentlessly driving consumers toward the cheapest option, and more about helping them optimize for the outcome they want. That changes the role they could play in consumption, interrogating whether a product is worth the price at all.

The shift creates both a threat and an opportunity for brands. As more decisions move upstream to AI agents, more of a brand’s value becomes open to scrutiny. Brands may increasingly have to prove, to both the consumer and their agent, why choosing them is worth it. They, therefore, must seek answers to three strategic questions: Can an AI agent understand their value? Where will they compete for influence? And which moments are worth owning?

1. Can the agent understand your value?

Among active AI users in EMEA, gen AI is already the number one channel for product discovery. But as agents move from helping consumers explore options toward recommending and eventually choosing, being findable, accurate, and machine-readable is increasingly becoming the baseline, not the advantage.

A prominent consumer goods company put this to the test with its pet food range. It updated how a selection of its products was described and presented across digital platforms, making them easier for AI to read and surface. The results were immediate. In searches for specific products, the optimized range captured nearly twice the AI recommendations it had before.

Being understood, however, is only the first hurdle. As agents become better at interpreting consumer intent, they need to understand not only what a product is, but why it is the right choice for what the consumer is trying to achieve. Structured catalogs, consistent product information and emerging commerce protocols can make brands easier for machines to assess. But readability gets a brand into consideration; distinctive, provable relevance could increasingly determine what gets chosen.

Hospitality group The Ascott Limited, operating more than 1,000 properties across 230 cities, approached the challenge systematically. It is developing the architectural foundations to enable next-generation AI-enabled travel experiences by connecting core systems such as its reservations systems through a model context protocol layer. This allows structured information to be surfaced to agents searching for and making recommendations on behalf of travelers.^[3]

The reason: Agents can increasingly break products into comparable attributes, assess claims against reviews and other signals, and evaluate options against an individual consumer’s needs and goals. That could bring everything from product performance and price premiums to fulfillment and service outcomes under greater scrutiny. The challenge for brands is no longer simply to make their value visible, but to make it intelligible—and defensible—to a machine acting on the consumer’s behalf.

2. Where will you compete for influence?

As more discovery, evaluation, and decision-making happens through AI, brands need to decide what role they want to play in the emerging agentic ecosystem.

Brands with scale, consumer trust and strong data may seek to become the agent consumers start with, owning much of the relationship themselves. Others will need to ensure they are understood and recommended by the AI agent. Then there are brands that may choose to provide products, inventory or fulfillment behind an experience owned by someone else.

Ascott’s ambition goes further than discoverability. Its AI concierge, Cubby, is being developed into a personal travel agent that moves from helping guests explore options to making bookings on their behalf.⁴

For many businesses, the answer will be a combination of where to own the relationship, where to influence the decision and where to partner for reach.

3. Which moments are worth owning?

EMEA consumers are open to AI involvement across very different kinds of purchases, but their willingness to surrender control changes as the agent assumes greater autonomy. As AI takes on more of the functional work of searching, comparing, replenishing and transacting, a parallel consumer journey emerges that may bypass many of the touchpoints brands have traditionally designed around. Intent might form on social media, narrow through an AI conversation, and convert somewhere else entirely.

The pursuit of value isn’t simply a pursuit of lower prices. People want AI agents to help them consume better.

The solution is not to own every interaction. Brands need to determine where AI can remove friction and represent them effectively, and where direct engagement creates value worth protecting. As AI compresses the functional journey, the human moments that remain become scarcer and potentially more valuable. Brands need to decide which moments they can hand over and which they cannot afford to give away. With AI potentially removing more of the routine journey, stores, expert interactions, service and distinctive brand experiences may become more important.

Win the agent, win the consumer

EMEA consumers expect AI to find better solutions, compare brands more rigorously and work the market in their financial interest. Handing that job to AI has not lowered their standards. It has given them a sharper way to act on them. The brands that earn that trust—through better value propositions, clearer presence and experiences worth returning to—will be the ones consumers choose, time and again.

About the Authors

Oliver Wright is a senior managing director at Accenture, working with leading consumer industries companies to shape growth, innovation and reinvention across the sector. He advises executive teams on operating models, digital commerce and AI‑driven transformation.

Jennifer Ducarre is a senior manager at Accenture Research. She leads Accenture’s global consumer insights team, bringing a consumer perspective to conversations on disruption, technology and growth across consumer industries.

References

^[1] Active users are those who engage with gen AI at least once a week

^[2] Progressive Grocer, “AI grocery assistants are about more than bigger baskets” September 2026

^[3] Ascott Star Rewards, “Ascott invests in AI-ready infrastructure to scale agentic commerce”, April 2026

^[4] Ibid