Implementing or expanding AI is the top priority for UAE commerce leaders this year, ahead of growing the customer base and adapting to changing buyer behaviours, says a new research from Salesforce, a leading AI CRM company.
The UAE findings from its fourth edition of the State of Commerce report, reveals a market moving quickly to adapt as shoppers increasingly start their purchase journeys with a question to an AI assistant rather than a traditional search engine.
Globally, the report found that agentic search as the first step in the shopping journey grew 200 per cent year over year, with traffic referred from AI chats climbing between 150 and 428 per cent across every quarter measured.
Implementing or expanding artificial intelligence capabilities now ranks as their number one priority for the year ahead, ahead of expanding the customer base, adapting to changing buyer behaviours, expanding omnichannel capabilities, and improving data quality and management, the study said.
UAE businesses are already acting to stay visible where buying decisions now begin. 62 per cent have created or optimised content for conversational and question-based queries, 61 per cent have improved product content quality, and another 61 per cent have worked to increase their presence across third-party sources. 58 per cent have submitted data feeds directly to AI search platforms, while 37 per cent have optimized product descriptions for natural language and 31 per cent now monitor how their brands appear in AI-generated responses.
"The UAE has always understood that technology only matters when it improves how people live and work. What this research shows is a market that gets it. Our commerce leaders are not waiting to see what AI search becomes. They are already reshaping how customers find them, and they are doing the harder work of connecting their data, so the experience actually delivers. The ambition in this country has never been the question. What I see in these numbers is execution catching up to that ambition, and that is when real transformation happens," said Mohammed Alkhotani, SVP and GM, Salesforce, Middle East.
The UAE data shows that foundation work pays off. Among local organisations that have unified their customer data, 48 per cent report improved outcomes from AI and automation, 47 per cent reported better alignment between sales, marketing, and commerce teams, and 46 per cent achieved more consistent pricing and contract application. 43 per cent have increased conversion rates, the same share has improved customer retention and loyalty, and 41 per cent resolve customer issues faster.
At the same time, the research exposes where UAE omnichannel experiences still break down. For B2B organizations, ordering channels siloed across multiple systems is the most common failure point at 44 per cent. Inventory data that is not synchronized in real time affects 37 per cent of businesses, while 35 per cent cannot recognise customer information consistently across channels and the same share struggle with complicated or inconsistent returns and exchanges.
A further 33 percent cite inconsistent pricing and promotions across channels. Only 1 percent of UAE multichannel organisations report no significant breakdowns at all, the report said. -TradeArabia News Service
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