Golden quarter week six: AI takes the reins this Christmas

AI to take the reins this Christmas

For many in retail, Christmas is as much about chaos as it is about cheer. Demand peaks, delivery windows shrink, and shopper behaviour becomes less predictable. But with Artificial Intelligence (AI) set to take a more active role in homes, stores and behind the scenes, how products are discovered, priced and delivered will be different this year.

Consumers will embrace as a shopping companion

This Christmas, AI will play a more visible role in how people plan, shop and discover. Walmart’s new partnership with OpenAI marks a decisive step towards agentic commerce, where AI proactively shapes the shopping journey in real time. Through Sparky, its AI assistant, customers can plan meals, restock essentials or discover festive treats directly through ChatGPT, with instant checkout completing the experience.

Walmart’s approach reframes commerce around conversations, not clicks, blending convenience, personalisation and inspiration in one seamless flow. Shoppers describe what they need and AI takes care of the rest. As consumers learn to trust AI with their shopping lists, recipe ideas and gifting suggestions, these tools will move from optional to habitual.

Retailers deploy intelligence to bring festive order

For retailers, the challenge of Christmas lies in balancing peak demand with unpredictable shopper behaviour. Shelves empty faster, replenishment teams are stretched, and out-of-stocks can quickly turn festive cheer into frustration. This year, technology is helping to drive performance.

UK-based Morrisons is using AI-powered shelf-monitoring cameras to identify gaps, planogram compliance and low stock levels in real time. At Christmas, when turnover in core categories like confectionery, cooking ingredients and gifting is at its most volatile, this technology provides store teams with a live view of availability, enabling them to keep shelves full during the busiest trading days of the year. By pairing these insights with predictive tools for demand and labour planning, retailers can respond to pressure before it builds.

Manufacturers lean on AI for seasonal precision

Behind the scenes, the busiest quarter of the year is also the least forgiving. Every flavour, pack format and promotion must earn its place. Mondelez is using AI-assisted formulation and innovation tools to cut product development time by up to five fold, allowing it to refine recipes and seasonal variants in weeks rather than months. The system analyses taste profiles, ingredient costs and nutritional data to recommend optimal combinations, supporting launches such as Oreo flavour extensions and Cadbury innovations for festive moments.

At Christmas, agility matters. With lead times compressed and shopper preferences shifting towards indulgence and gifting, AI allows manufacturers to adapt assortments and packaging more rapidly. While fast doesn’t always mean flawless, AI can narrow the margins of error, helping teams to anticipate pressure points early, protect quality and refine plans quickly even when timelines tighten.

The agent era begins

The next stage of AI adoption will be defined by connection and autonomy. Retailers and suppliers are moving beyond individual pilots to cross-enterprise ecosystems where forecasting, pricing, personalisation and supply are linked in real time. As agentic AI evolves, decision-making will shift from support to delegation, with systems that anticipate rather than react.

By next Christmas, this shift will start to show. The first generation of retail agents will be live, managing demand forecasts, testing promotions and running store-level optimisation in the background. These systems won’t replace people, but they’ll change how decisions are made, turning data-led guidance into autonomous action.

Start with the foundations

But AI is not just for Christmas. While tactical deployments can ease seasonal pressure, long-term advantage lies in readiness. That starts with data.

Most companies aren’t AI-ready because their data isn’t. Auditing infrastructure may be the least glamorous task on the list, but it’s the most important. Without clean, connected, and governed data, AI remains a pilot, not a platform.

The next 12 months offer a natural runway. Pilot for Easter. Scale for the World Cup. Embed for Christmas 2026. This phased approach allows businesses to test, learn, and build with purpose. The next 12 months won’t solve everything, but they’ll set the direction.