Retailers have high hopes for artificial intelligence. When used to its full potential, AI helps retailers personalize their messaging and build the customer relationships required for long-term growth. But across the retail industry, incomplete, unreliable customer data is stopping AI initiatives in their tracks.
That's one of the key findings from Amperity’s 2025 State of AI in Retail report. Based on survey responses from 1,000 American retail professionals, the report provides insights into AI sentiment and implementation from the sales floor all the way to the C-suite.
Most retailers are excited by what AI has to offer and keen to embrace the technology:
65% of those surveyed believe AI will increase customer value
63% believe it will improve customer loyalty.
It's logical, then, that 97% of respondents expect to maintain or increase their spending on AI over the next 12 months.
However, these investments only make sense if retailers have a strong data foundation - poor quality customer data undermines even the most carefully planned AI initiatives. But while 64% of respondents believe their customer data is structured enough for AI, only 21% are “very confident” in their ability to understand and act on individual customer behavior. For the 58% of retailers whose customer data is fragmented or incomplete, AI success remains well beyond reach.
These statistics suggest a reality in which retailers are saying one thing but doing another.
Retailers claim they’re ready to ramp up their AI investments, but issues with customer data are getting in the way of real results. Let's take a closer look at those barriers to adoption and how AI itself can play a key role in accelerating progress.
Massive, messy customer data blocks progress
AI allows retailers to provide the personalized experiences customers have come to expect. By using AI to analyze behavior and preferences, you can nudge customers towards conversion with tailored product recommendations, ads, and offers. But AI-driven personalization doesn't just boost sales in the short term - it also supports the brand loyalty that fuels sustainable growth.
That advanced level of personalization requires a strong data foundation. AI tools need access to quality data in order to produce quality outputs. However, siloed retail systems make it difficult to compile complete, unique customer profiles. If your help desk software, email marketing platforms, and point of sales (POS) systems gather and format data differently, you'll end up with a fragmented view of your customers. Even worse, when AI has access to just part of the data, your insights and outputs will inevitably be skewed as a result.
Joining records based on common identifiers such as name, email address, or telephone number seems like an obvious fix, but the nature of customer data means it's not so simple. People move, change names, or sign up for multiple accounts with different email addresses. Human errors and typos only add to the chaos.
For retailers, messy customer data is a major barrier to AI success. With no clear understanding of who your customers are, you have a precise, powerful weapon - but nowhere to aim. Establishing a target for your AI initiatives starts with Identity Resolution - the process of merging duplicate profiles and keeping track of customers when their data changes. Once you have a clean, consistent view of your customers, you can then start reaping the benefits of your AI strategy.
How retailers can get ready for AI with Amperity
To drive growth with AI, retailers must look beyond traditional approaches to customer data. Featuring new generative AI capabilities, AmpAI helps businesses truly understand their audiences and start using AI to outpace competitors.
Building an accurate data foundation is the critical first step that your AI initiatives depend on. AI-powered identity resolution improves the quality of your customer data, using AI and machine learning (ML) matching algorithms to find hidden connections between online and offline first-party data. While AmpAI does the heavy lifting, you stay in control — you can see why AI merged your customer data and review, edit, or override AI field selections and tagging. It's a smart, scalable way to keep customer profiles up to date despite constant changes to their data.
AmpAI accelerates data modeling for retailers chasing rapid growth. By asking Amperity's AI assistant to draft SQL queries (or troubleshoot existing queries) you can slash the time it takes to check data accuracy and outcomes. AmpAI replaces complex coding with natural language prompts, which means you don't need technical expertise to clean up customer data.
Ampertity also integrates with leading business tools to resolve identities and create the 360-degree customer view your AI initiatives will thrive on. From e-commerce to live chat to payments, Amperity integrations make sure you can ingest and normalize data across your most important retail systems, regardless of format.
Embracing the AI opportunity
Together, Amperity's AI capabilities help retailers turn customer data from an obstacle into an asset. Rich, reliable customer profiles are exactly what AI tools need to deliver accurate insights and help personalize messaging around products and services.
It’s time for retailers to move from enthusiasm to action and start driving real growth with AI. Read the 2025 State of AI in Retail report to find out more.