For more than a decade, e-commerce brands optimized their digital channels for search rankings, click-through rates, and fast checkouts. That approach worked when discovery started with a browser and ended on a product page.
Today, discovery looks very different – and so does consumer trust.
Consumers now find products through social feeds, influencer recommendations, and increasingly, conversational AI. Instead of typing keywords into a search bar, people are asking questions. Instead of browsing brand websites, they’re relying on systems to narrow choices for them. In this environment, trust is no longer built at the point of checkout. It’s formed much earlier, often before a consumer ever sees a brand’s website or packaging.
This shift isn’t just about using the latest technology. It’s a critical turning point for how brands earn trust. As discovery becomes more automated, consumers place greater weight on signals that indicate reliability, consistency, and legitimacy.
In practice, AI serves as a brand gatekeeper. It decides which brands to include, compare, summarize, or exclude. This happens before a consumer makes a choice. Brands that are credible, clear, and easy to understand will stay visible.Those that aren’t risk being filtered out, even if their products are strong.
For years, product discovery followed a predictable arc:
That path began to break as social commerce took hold. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube became discovery engines, often guiding consumers directly to a purchase, sometimes without ever visiting a brand’s website.
Now, conversational AI is compressing the journey even further.
AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity provide quick answers, comparisons, and recommendations. They do this outside the usual search results or brand websites. They serve as discovery engines, comparison tools, and decision-support interfaces simultaneously.
Shoppers are asking questions like “What’s the best shape wear for everyday wear?” or “Which skincare brand is good for sensitive skin?” and receiving curated answers in seconds.
We discussed this shift in more detail in our article, AI and Zero-Click Search: Why LoopMarketing Matters for Your Brand.
Discovery isn’t the only thing changing. Checkout is evolving, too.
Sensor Tower market intelligence shows that shopping is one of the fastest-growing prompt categories on ChatGPT, accounting for nearly 10% of all searches. Between January and July 2025, shopping-related queries on the platform doubled.
In mid-2025, OpenAI introduced Instant Checkout, allowing consumers to purchase products directly inside ChatGPT. Powered by Stripe, the feature launched with products from Etsy and Shopify.
Early participants include brands like SKIMS, Glossier, and Target; brands known for precise positioning and substantial brand equity. That detail matters. In conversational AI commerce, brands that are easy to understand get recommended. Everyone else gets filtered out.
Visibility today depends on whether AI systems can clearly understand and trust a brand. Nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click, as users get answers directly from AI-driven interfaces or SERP summaries. That means many consumers are researching brands without ever visiting a website.
Adobe’s U.S. research reinforces this shift. Among people who use ChatGPT, 77% now treat it as a search engine, and nearly one in four U.S. consumers go to ChatGPT first when looking for information. Discovery is already happening inside these tools: more than a third of consumers report finding a new product or brand through ChatGPT.
Behind the scenes, AI systems evaluate brands based on a mix of signals, including brand consistency across channels, customer reviews, third-party mentions, earned media, structured product information, and clarity of positioning. When those signals conflict, brand visibility suffers.
On the business side, nearly half of marketers and business owners now use ChatGPT to promote their brand, and two-thirds plan to increase their focus on AI visibility.
AI systems favor brands that are easy to summarize and explain. When positioning is unclear or inconsistent, AI can’t confidently recommend a brand.
Research shows that consistent brand presentation can boost revenue by up to 33%, yet fewer than 25% of brands report strong consistency across channels. In an AI-driven discovery environment, that inconsistency becomes a visibility risk. The result isn’t only lower traffic. It’s also being quietly excluded from the consideration set altogether.
In 2025, consumers required an average of 8.5 touchpoints with a brand before making a purchase. Many of those interactions now occur outside brand-controlled environments, such as websites, packaging, or storefronts.
When consumers don’t see tangible cues upfront, they rely more heavily on trust signals. These include brand reputation, familiarity, and signals that suggest legitimacy. Brands that rely on just one or two owned channels risk missing most of the customer journey.
The stakes are high: 32% of consumers will abandon a brand they love after one bad experience. This can occur even in digital interactions without any human involvement.
As discovery becomes more automated, trust becomes more important.
The Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that trust is a leading driver of brand choice and loyalty, often outweighing price and convenience. At the same time, 3 in 10 consumers say they trust ChatGPT more than traditional search engines.
Yet for many consumers, trust is built outside the screen. 65% of consumers say a good experience with a brand affects their buying choices more than ads. This shows the importance of real-world experiences, service quality, and physical brand touchpoints in creating trust.
The Counterintuitive Edge: Why Physical Marketing Now Matters More
As commerce becomes more digital, meaningful differentiation moves offline.
Physical brand experiences act as proof points. They validate what AI recommends and give consumers confidence that a brand is genuine and worth choosing. While algorithms handle recommendations and checkout, real-life experiences and print marketing do the work AI can’t. They foster emotional connection, emphasize credibility, and create lasting memories.
Print and physical brand experiences also counter screen fatigue. In a world of constant scrolling and algorithmic sameness, a tangible brand moment stands out.
Of course, AI has its uses in enhancing physical retail through:
Hyper-personalization, such as opt-in personalized offers in-store
Optimized store layouts, using AI-driven planograms
Frictionless experiences, including scan-and-go and smarter inventory
But the differentiator in these cases isn’t the technology. It’s how the customer experiences the brand in the real world.
AI handles the what and how efficiently. Experiential and print marketing deliver the why.
Read our article, The Future is Phygital, to learn more about how blending physical and digital touchpoints creates stronger customer experiences and long-term loyalty.
Print isn’t old-school. It’s both a premium marketing strategy on its own and a powerful complement to digital marketing.
Well-designed print creates sensory proof AI can’t replicate. It strengthens brand awareness beyond the moment of engagement and slows buyers down during high-consideration decisions. Most importantly, it bolsters trust.
Print also plays a role in reinforcing brand memory. This is the same recall consumers draw on when they later ask AI tools for recommendations.
Modern print also seamlessly connects with digital journeys through QR codes, personalized URLs, and campaign tracking. When print and digital work together, brands extend reach while deepening engagement.
Print builds confidence. AI accelerates convenience. Together, they create stronger buying experiences.
For more evidence on the power of combining both print and digital marketing, please read our article, Print Marketing Reloaded: Combining Tradition with Innovation.
The future of print is experience-driven.
Brands are moving away from producing more print pieces. Instead, they're focusing on fewer, higher-impact touchpoints designed as part of an integrated brand system. AI and customer data increasingly inform strategic print marketing. When aligned with digital strategy, it reinforces clarity and consistency across physical and digital channels.
When done well, print is not an afterthought or a standalone tactic. It becomes a strategic asset that supports digital discovery, fosters trust, and strengthens brand memory.
AI will change how brands are discovered. Print will influence how brands are remembered.
The future belongs to brands that balance digital intelligence with physical presence. These brands understand that in a world of automated commerce, human connection becomes premium.
AI may discover your brand. But your customer will remember your brand through experience.
The brands winning in this new environment aren’t choosing between digital and physical. They’re aligning both.
At Phase 3, we help brands translate digital strategy into physical experiences; align print, packaging, signage, and displays with brand positioning; and create tangible assets that support modern buying journeys.
We’ll operate as your strategic partner. With Phase 3, your brand will show up clearly, consistently, and memorably wherever discovery happens.
Contact us today to start the conversation.