Festive shopping gets an AI boost as e-commerce platforms expand use

E-commerce platforms report a surge in AI-led product discovery during festive sales, while expanding its use to logistics, forecasting and customer support.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered product discovery and personalisation are playing a growing role in festive shopping this year. As a result, e-commerce (ecom) platforms are reporting high customer engagement through conversational search, visual discovery and personalised recommendations during their festive sales.

 

According to ecom platform Meesho, AI-powered discovery and personalisation accounted for nearly 85 per cent of orders on Day 1 of its Mega Blockbuster Sale. Meanwhile, ecom giant Amazon reported that customers who interacted with its AI shopping assistant Rufus during the Great Indian Festival purchased at a 75 per cent higher rate than its overall customer base.

 

Likewise, Snapdeal also pointed to the growing use of the technology in helping consumers find products. It said that more than 81 per cent of orders on its platform involved engagement with AI-powered discovery as of September 2026.

 

Beyond product discovery and personalisation, though, platforms are extending AI applications and their usage to demand forecasting, logistics, fraud detection and customer support, as festive sales bring in higher traffic and order volumes.

 

At Amazon India, customers interacting with Rufus averaged three queries per session, with nearly 30 per cent of usage coming from customers returning with follow-up questions as they narrowed down their choices, said Payal Gupta, director of customer experience, Amazon India. Ahead of the shopping event, customers using Rufus also set more than 4 million personalised deal alerts on products they were tracking.

 

Meesho is using AI to account for differences in shopping preferences across regions, languages, and occasions. The company said its AI capabilities also help sellers anticipate demand and stock inventory ahead of local demand peaks. In addition, AI agents address queries related to financial journeys, payouts, monetisation and campaign creation, reducing dependence on human intervention and helping sellers resolve issues more quickly.

 

On the logistics side, its GeoIndia large language model (LLM) improved geocoding accuracy by 11 percentage points compared to last year's sale, while misroutes improved by more than 5 percentage points. The system handled 172 per cent more traffic at peak than during the previous year's sale, said Pratik Kumar, head of engineering, Meesho.

 

For Snapdeal, its AI applications span personalised fashion discovery through StyleMatch AI, visual search through Snap & Shop, conversational product discovery and address enrichment through PinPoint AI. Its customer support tool, Siya AI, resolved more than 89 per cent of inbound customer support queries during the six months ended September 30, 2026. In addition, its seller-facing tool, SnapList AI, reduced catalogue onboarding time by 90 per cent.

 

With respect to shopping, the growing use of AI reflects changing consumer behaviour. A YouGov India Festive Shopping Report for 2026 found that 88 per cent of consumers use or plan to use AI tools during the festive season, primarily to compare products and brands and find deals.

 

Likewise, an Integral Ad Science report found that 38 per cent of Indian consumers planned to use AI for product and gift research in 2026, compared with 32 per cent in 2025. The shift suggests that AI is increasingly being used across the shopping journey, from initial product research and price comparisons to purchase decisions and post-sale support.