Prompt to Purchase: How AI is Rewriting the Consumer Journey - Captify UK

Captify UK has released new research Prompt to Purchase: How AI is Rewriting the Consumer Journey, exploring how responses generated by large language models (LLMs) are influencing brand discovery, product consideration and purchase intent.

The findings reveal that around 70% of AI responses focus on a single primary brand rather than presenting multiple alternatives.

Additionally, the research found LLM responses tend to describe brands more positively than the wording used in people’s prompts. This in turn creates an optimism bias that can strengthen brand perception and increase the likelihood of purchase consideration.

At the same time, the report suggests consumers are most likely to continue their journey towards purchase after around five to six prompts, offering an opportunity for brands to influence purchase decisions before people transition from AI to the open web. 

According to the research, UK consumers are increasingly treating LLMs as trusted advisers rather than search tools. So, brand recommendations within AI conversations are associated with increased brand consideration and triggered meaningful search activity on the open web. 

In fact, the findings show that between 75% and 85% of AI-influenced consumer journeys move to the open web within the first two weeks, with many high-intent categories, such as ‘mobile’ in Tech and ‘accommodation’ in Travel, converting within just 48 hours.

The Prompt to Purchase: How AI is Rewriting the Consumer Journey report combines Captify's AI and open web intelligence to uncover how AI recommendations influence consumer behaviour and their implications for marketers. To read the full report, download it here.