Accenture hosted a media briefing to present findings from its Consumer Pulse Survey 2026 and lay out a framework for how businesses across Asia Pacific should prepare for what it calls “agentic commerce” — a shift in which AI agents research, compare, purchase and manage returns on a consumer’s behalf.
Key findings include:
- More than 1 out of 4 consumers now use large language models as their number one discovery channel
- 9 out of 10 would like to shop directly inside gen AI tools
- 8 out of 10 consumers are likely to listen to gen AI tools for 50% of their spend decisions
- 68% of consumers want agents to shop for their idealized self, supporting goals like making healthier choices, staying on budget or upgrading more intentionally. The focus is not on optimization, it is aspiration
Not just that, AI agents could also change the loyalty equation
- 57% consumers would instruct their AI agent which brands to consider, showing that brand preference remains intentional and influential, but 1 in 3 would switch preferred brands if an AI agent said it was a better fit
- Also 85% trust AI agents over best friends to make a purchase
The survey of 25,590 consumers across 16 countries, including more than 7,000 respondents from Australia, Greater China, India and Japan, found that APAC consumers are already ahead of many businesses in adopting this behavior. Vivek Luthra, Senior Managing Director and Lead for AI & Data, Asia Oceania at Accenture, said the survey has tracked this shift over several years and now shows that “APAC consumers are really ready for agent-led shopping.”
The new loyalty equation
The research also points to a change in how brand loyalty is formed. While 57% of consumers say they would instruct their AI agent on which brands to consider, one in three would still switch to a different brand if their agent recommended a better fit, and 85% of consumers say they trust AI agents more than their own best friends to make a purchase.
Patricio De Matteis, Managing Director and Lead for Southeast Asia at Accenture Song, told the media that “the decisionmaker is no longer just the person; the agent is acting for them,” and that brands are now being evaluated on structured data, verifiable claims and operational reliability rather than traditional marketing and persuasion. Accenture’s guidance to businesses is to pursue two parallel plays: in the near term, become the “choice of agents” by making product data machine-readable, pricing transparent and claims verifiable so that broad, horizontal AI assistants can confidently recommend them; over the longer term, category leaders should build specialized vertical agents — backed by deep domain expertise and first-party data — to become the trusted “agent of choice” within a category such as travel, beauty, banking or healthcare.
Ascott’s Cubby goes from travel companion to travel agent
Hospitality group The Ascott Limited was presented as an early mover on this front. Tan Bee Leng, Ascott’s Chief Commercial Officer, described how the company is investing in AI-ready infrastructure to evolve its digital concierge, Cubby, from a conversational travel companion into a personal travel agent capable of comparing options, planning itineraries and completing bookings on a guest’s behalf. Since launching in 2023, Cubby has already handled more than 900,000 guest enquiries. Ascott’s roadmap rests on collaborations with Accenture, which is helping redesign the underlying technology architecture; Amadeus, which is implementing a new central reservations system built for attribute-based, AI-readable inventory; and EHL Hospitality Business School, which is training Ascott’s workforce to work alongside AI tools. Tan emphasized that the rollout is deliberately staged, saying “We are testing and learning in very controlled environments before considering broader deployment.” She added that Ascott’s near-term priority is ensuring the brand is “discoverable, understandable and trusted” by AI systems, with AI-assisted trip planning expected to mature ahead of fully agent-led booking.
An enterprise-wide undertaking
Across the discussion, speakers agreed that scaling agentic commerce is an enterprise-wide undertaking rather than a marketing or technology initiative alone. Nhung Mason, Managing Director and Lead for Accenture’s Products Group in Asia Oceania, noted that seven in ten organizations are already working with AI agents in some form, but that the companies seeing the strongest returns are those making focused, strategic bets on platforms and capabilities rather than scattered pilots. Accenture’s own client work shows that fewer than 10% of large organizations have been able to scale AI successfully across the enterprise so far, underscoring that trust — built through data quality, operational reliability and clear governance — remains the deciding factor in how quickly agentic commerce moves from experimentation to mainstream adoption.
