68% of Parents Will Use AI to Shop for School

What Happened

Back-to-school has become a dress rehearsal for the holidays — and this year it is doubling as the first real-world test of AI-assisted shopping at scale. In Tinuiti's Holiday Shopping Trends survey of 1,040 U.S. parents, only 32% said they do not plan to use an AI tool for back-to-school purchases. The other 68% expect to use assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini to find deals, compare products, and summarize reviews before they buy.

The finding lands amid a shifting retail landscape. Walmart's fiscal Q2 showed global e-commerce sales up 23% and global ad revenue up 38%, with Walmart Connect growing 43% in the U.S. — evidence that retail media keeps scaling even as discovery fragments. Meanwhile, Tinuiti's broader 2026 AI research found that 48% of U.S. adults now trust AI to recommend products, with ChatGPT the most widely used generative AI platform at 52%, followed by Gemini at 45%.

Key Facts

• Only 32% of parents plan to avoid AI tools for back-to-school shopping — the other 68% expect to use them (Tinuiti survey of 1,040 U.S. parents).
• 48% of U.S. adults now trust AI to recommend products; ChatGPT is the most-used generative AI platform (52%), ahead of Gemini (45%).
• Tinuiti calls back-to-school a "second Q4": 70% of purchases take place in July and August.
• Walmart's global e-commerce sales grew 23% in fiscal Q2; global ad revenue rose 38%, and Walmart Connect grew 43% in the U.S.
• Discovery is fragmenting: social media and in-store displays tied as the leading discovery sources, each cited by 43% of parents.
• Price still rules: 65% of parents rank price among their top three purchase considerations, and 57% cite sales and discounts.

Why This Matters for Shopify Merchants

For Shopify merchants, the survey describes a new gatekeeper in the funnel. A parent shopping for a student laptop used to start at Google, Amazon, or Walmart; that journey increasingly starts by asking an AI assistant for the best laptop under $800. The consideration set narrows before the shopper ever reaches your store — which means your product pages, structured data, and review footprint decide whether an AI mentions you at all.

The timing is the real story. Back-to-school is the warm-up for BFCM, and Tinuiti is already advising marketers to optimize product detail pages for AI shopping assistants and LLM results alongside traditional search and retail media. Merchants who treat AI visibility as a Q4 scramble will start the holiday season invisible in the very channel their customers now use to decide what to buy.

What Merchants Should Do Now

1. Audit your top product pages for completeness: sizing, specs, materials, shipping, and pricing details that an AI assistant needs to answer shopper questions.
2. Make your structured data machine-readable with valid Product, Offer, and Review schema so LLMs can parse exactly what you sell.
3. Keep reviews and fresh content flowing: AI recommendations lean heavily on review signals and up-to-date product information.
4. Set a BFCM AI-visibility checkpoint now: test whether ChatGPT and Gemini recommend your products for your core category queries, and fix gaps before October.

Original Source

Original source: The Current
Original publication: 2026-08-25
Coverage updated: 2026-08-27