AI Recommendations Drive Purchases — and Nearly Half Come Back

Nearly a quarter of U.S. consumers have bought a product on an AI recommendation — and 46% of them returned an item in the past year, according to a Blue Yonder survey of 2,000 U.S. shoppers. The top reason wasn't fit. It was that the product turned out different than described, cited by 36% of those who sent an AI-recommended purchase back. Incorrect size or fit came second at 23%.

That pattern flips the traditional returns script. Across U.S. retail generally, wrong size or fit is the leading return driver at 42%, per the survey. So AI assistants appear decent at matching fit — but weak at describing products accurately.

Is this an AI problem or a data problem?

Blue Yonder CEO Duncan Angove blames the data, not the machines. "Shoppers are taking AI's advice faster than retailers are getting ready for it, and nearly half of them are sending something back," Angove said in a statement. "That's not really an AI problem. It's a data problem. An AI assistant is only as good as the product information it can find, and most product data was written for a search bar, not for a machine suggesting products for someone. When what arrives doesn't match what the shopper expected, it goes back in the box."

His point: retailers are feeding answer engines product copy built for search queries, not for conversational recommendation. The mismatch shows up in the return reasons.

Who is actually buying on AI advice?

Adoption skews young. Of the 2,000 shoppers Blue Yonder surveyed:

• 43% of Gen Z bought a product based on an AI recommendation
• 36% of millennials did the same
• 19% of Gen X
• 9% of baby boomers

Trust is following a separate track. A recent Mastercard survey found nearly a third of teenagers trust AI-generated product recommendations over a friend. But a SmartCustomer survey found 89% of shoppers don't fully trust AI recommendations, and a third of them made a regrettable purchase based on one.

What happens when the return policy disappoints?

Returns policy now sits squarely in the purchase decision. Over half of U.S. respondents — 51% — said they chose one retailer over another purely because it had a better returns policy, Blue Yonder found. Punishment for strict policies is real: 29% of respondents said they stopped shopping altogether at a retailer that tightened its return policy in the last year.

AI amplifies that leverage. Research from RTB House shows AI tools often surface more options than traditional search, so consumers can find an alternative quickly when the first option doesn't fit the bill.

The takeaway for retailers: as AI-guided buying grows from a quarter of consumers upward, the quality of product data fed to answer engines — not just the AI itself — will decide how much of that revenue survives the returns desk.