Artificial intelligence has dominated Retail Week readers’ curiosity in 2026, accounting for more than half of the questions they asked on the site in the first quarter of the financial year.
Using Retail Week’s Intelligent Answers (iA) tool, 52% of queries between April and June were related to AI in retail.
But rather than asking “what is AI?”, as they may have done a couple of years ago, readers want to know what works and what their competitors are doing.
They are interested in practical use cases, return on investment and implementation, rather than basic AI explanations, and are asking:
- Which areas of AI are retailers investing in?
- How is generative AI being used to improve product discovery?
- Which retailers are using AI assistants?
- Which retailers are investing in AI?
- What digital and AI priorities do retailers have?
With so many AI initiatives being rolled out from the warehouse to the shop floor, iA can help readers find the practical answers and case studies they’re looking for. Retail Week has also created the AI Investment Tracker to monitor retail’s latest investments in AI.
Readers also frequently asked about strategy and customer experience. However, other issues worrying businesses in Q1, such as crime, workforce, supply chain resilience and the climate, make up comparatively few of the enquiries.
Intelligent Answers (iA) is our in-house generative AI-powered tool that taps into thousands of articles on retail-week.com to bring you instant summaries complete with clickable links for further reading.
Unlike other generative AI platforms, which source content from across the open web, all iA answers are based solely on Retail Week’s unparalleled, factual coverage of the industry, including news, analysis, features, interviews, reports, and exclusive industry data.
Intelligent Answers is the best way to use AI to explore retail-week.com. You can be confident that every article has been created, fact-checked, and published by a team that has been trusted by the industry for nearly 40 years.
Find out more about how iA from Retail Week works: http://retail-week.com/ask-ia
The retailers other retailers are asking about
When it comes to specific companies that readers are asking about, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, and Currys make up the top three, closely followed by John Lewis. Asos and Asda complete the top six.
Readers are interested in these major players’ strategies, pay and leadership – and, of course, how they are using AI.
| Retailer | Mentions |
|---|---|
|
Tesco |
10 |
|
Marks & Spencer |
10 |
|
Currys |
10 |
|
John Lewis |
9 |
|
Asos |
4 |
|
Asda |
4 |
|
Harvey Nichols |
3 |
|
Oliver Bonas |
3 |
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