Christmas shopping has shifted away from the search bar. More shoppers are turning to AI answer engines to research products, compare options, and decide which gifts to buy.
For retailers, a reframe is critical. Answer engines shortlist products and guide purchase decisions long before shoppers ever reach retail or ecommerce websites. This compresses the shopping funnel and makes traditional search insufficient as a primary customer acquisition channel.
Instead, retailers need to ensure answer engines recommend them throughout the shopping journey. This requires understanding how shoppers use answer engines for Christmas gifting, how to earn mentions and citations in relevant AI responses, and how to maximize visibility across AI search.
This report gives you that edge. It draws on real shopper behavior from Christmas 2025, analyzed through Profound’s AI visibility lens, illustrating how people use AI to shop for the holiday. It also provides actionable takeaways, revealing how to optimize ecommerce products before the 2026 season ramps up so you can win the AI shelf this Christmas.
Key insights
The electronics, tech, and gaming owns AI-powered Christmas shopping
Spanning 31% of all holiday prompts, this is the single largest holiday shopping category. It’s driven by shoppers looking to build new setups and upgrade existing devices, not make impulse gift purchases.
Shoppers who state a channel preference overwhelmingly buy online
Online shopping preferences outweigh in-store shopping preferences by nearly 18 to one. A product’s digital presence and how it surfaces in AI recommendations effectively becomes its Christmas storefront.
Most AI visibility opportunities come before the buying decision
Together, product research (46.9%) and product comparisons (22%) make up over two-thirds (68.2%) of all holiday prompts. Shoppers use AI to browse before they decide, so the retailers who show up during discovery determine what’s on the shortlist.
Price drives decisions less often than quality or convenience
The most common decision drivers are quality and performance (24.4%) and convenience and speed (14.7%), followed by price and deals (13.2%). While price certainly matters, competing on discounts alone misreads what most shoppers are seeking.
Christmas shopping urgency peaks from December 22 to 23
Availability and delivery speed signals spike in the final stretch before Christmas. Shoppers are short on time to compare items, so they prioritize the gifts they can get in time for the holiday. Highlighting inventory status and shipping speed keeps retailers in the running.
Amazon has a strong lead for retailer share of voice
With 9.1% retailer share of voice, Amazon is far ahead of Steam, Shopify, eBay, and other ecommerce sites. Brands that sell on Amazon have an edge, as answer engines frequently use the site’s listings, pricing, and availability in AI responses.
Build the product pages AI recommends
The product offers that answer engines recommend most consistently share a handful of attributes. Optimize your product detail pages (PDPs) for these elements before the Christmas season, starting with the ones that have the greatest impact.
Keep pricing competitive and product feeds clean
Top-ranked product offers are 777% more likely to have the “Best Price” GPT tag. ChatGPT algorithmically determines this tag from available pricing data. To make sure your products are in the running, audit your feed for outdated prices and missing fields. Check competing offers and tighten the pricing gap on your most competitive SKUs.
Create FAQ sections on every priority PDP
FAQs are the biggest differentiator you can directly control. Top offers are 188% more likely to have an FAQ section. Since a higher count makes a difference, don’t skimp on this section. To build it, pull questions from customer reviews, support tickets, and answer engines. Write clear answers that help customers assess fit, sizing, compatibility, and use.
Add product videos to PDPs
The most prominent product offers are 106% more likely to have videos on their PDPs. They don’t necessarily need high production value. Instead, focus on publishing short clips that show key features, setup tutorials, and the product in use. This gives answer engines concrete material to cite and shoppers the visuals they want to see before buying.
Enable customer Q&As on PDPs
Top product offers are 60% more likely to have customer Q&A sections. In addition to providing a visibility lift, these sections provide a steady supply of fresh voice of customer language that you can use to inform sales and marketing. Allow other customers to answer these questions to generate more social proof.
Display customer reviews on PDPs
The top-ranked product offers are 35% more likely to have customer reviews. When you enable reviews on PDPs, make sure they render in a format answer engines can read rather than using Javascript. Show enough of them that the PDP reflects volume.
Upload more product images to PDPs
Don’t stop at a single image. Top product offers have 30% more images. Upload a variety of images that show your product at different angles, for different use cases, and at scale. Consider the views a shopper would want to see before committing to a purchase.
Prioritize product categories with the most demand
One category dominates Christmas week AI search. Electronics, tech, and gaming accounts for almost a third (31%) of all analyzed prompts, more than four times any other category. If you sell in this category, prioritize preparing relevant PDPs. Demand concentrates here, which makes visibility worth more and the cost of being absent higher.
Shoppers are largely looking to build or upgrade devices. Their prompts reflect questions about the capabilities of various PC components, specifications for different laptop models, and tips for setting up monitors and speakers.
Build your content around those questions, aiming at the biggest subcategories first. Within the electronics, tech, and gaming category, AI search is split across several subcategories. The largest is PC components, with 2.1% of prompts. Smartphones (1.5%) and laptops (1.1%) are the only other subcategories with more than a percent of prompts.
Demand drops off sharply after that. A distant second, the travel category accounts for 6.9% of analyzed prompts. Shoppers are actively exploring travel options, with questions about identifying peak seasons in certain locations, narrowing down destination options, and asking answer engines to plan multiday trips for them.
Flights are the most common topic of discussion, covering 6% of all travel prompts with questions around planning layovers, navigating to airports, and timing flights. Hotel-focused prompts (4.3%) are also popular, with questions around hotel neighborhoods and amenities.
Health, personal care, and fitness follows, with 6.4% of prompts overall. Shoppers are looking for skincare products with certain specs, asking for steps to use personal care items, and seeking tools to achieve specific health outcomes. They’re comparing hair styling tools, asking for product recommendations, and researching supplement benefits.
If you sell in one of these smaller categories, the demand is real even if the volume is lower. It’s well worth optimizing PDPs for the questions that the shoppers in your space are asking answer engines.
Create content that attracts browsers and buyers
During Christmas week, most prompts come from shoppers who are researching, not buying. General product research alone makes up 46.9% of the dataset, and product comparisons add another 22%. Together, more than two-thirds (68.9%) of analyzed prompts focus on activity that happens before a final purchase decision.
Build PDPs for the middle of the funnel first. These shoppers are asking about product specs and pulling together lists of items that fit a use case or recipient. They’re often working from shortlists they haven’t yet committed to.
On PDPs give them detailed specs, use case roundups, and head-to-head comparisons. Build in the elements that move them toward a purchase, like clear pricing, availability, and a direct path to purchase.
Ready-to-buy prompts are a smaller share overall, but they’re still well worth capturing. About one in 10 prompts are squarely at the bottom of the funnel, split between shoppers looking for where to buy items (6.1%) and those checking prices and deals (3.3%). Make sure answers to those queries surface on relevant PDPs.
Top-of-funnel gift idea prompts (1.2%) make up a small segment of the full dataset. Get gift guides live well before the holiday, as shoppers looking for ideas will have already moved on by Christmas week.
It’s also worth having post-purchase support content live before the holiday week. Since 7.4% of prompts seek help after the sale, this content can help improve customer retention and satisfaction.
Optimize your presence on the channels shoppers prefer
Among shoppers who state a buying channel preference, online dominates. Online shopping preferences outnumber in-store by nearly 18 to one (28.3% versus 1.6%). However, over two-thirds (69.2%) of prompts don’t state a preferred purchase channel, indicating that shoppers are primarily researching and comparing products rather than looking to buy.
Optimize for online buyers first. Go beyond your own website to see where answer engines pull recommendations for the topics that matter to your brand. Increasingly, that’s the shelf that shoppers see.
Among online retailers, Amazon (9.1%) has the largest share of voice. The brand appears in nearly one out of 10 answer engine responses in this dataset, confirming the extent to which Amazon dominates the ecommerce retail space.
Amazon’s share of voice is more than double any other platform. Steam comes in second with 3.9% share of voice, reflecting how popular the website is in the gaming industry. Ecommerce platform Shopify takes third place with 3.1% share of voice.
If you sell on Amazon or other top marketplace sites, treat those listings with the same rigor as your own website. Answer engines regularly cite their pricing and availability.
Focus on what drives holiday buying decisions
Of all purchase decision drivers, quality and performance is the most impactful, appearing in a quarter (24.4%) of analyzed prompts. It’s ahead of convenience and speed (14.7%) and price and deals (13.2%).
Lead PDPs with the information that drives purchase decisions. Shoppers tend to ask answer engines how reliable products are and request details on item quality, sometimes about specific items they’re close to buying. Give them customer reviews and ratings, performance specs, and quality standards.
Focus on convenience next. These prompts typically reflect a need for product-level convenience, showing that shoppers are looking for fast and easy solutions that offer portability or wireless capabilities. Plainly state shipping speed, costs, payment options, and ordering details.
Make pricing easy to find, but don’t lead with it every time. It ranks third among decision drivers, and four in five (80.7%) prompts don’t mention price sensitivity at all. Building your strategy around discounts misreads what most shoppers care about.
When you do have a true deal on offer, state it clearly. Budget-conscious shoppers (8.4%) are the largest of the price-sensitive groups, ahead of both mid-range (5.5%) and premium-willing (5.3%).
Brand loyalty is a surprisingly minor driver, surfacing in just 1.9% of analyzed prompts. While some shoppers certainly do prefer particular brands, loyalty isn’t a make-or-break component. Retailers that optimize for quality, convenience, and clear pricing can win shoppers who never would have sought them out directly.
Prepare for Christmas week day by day
Search behavior shifts in a few important ways throughout Christmas week. The page content and signals that win visibility change alongside it. Plan for four distinct windows.
December 20–21: the comparison window
Just under a third (31.3%) of the week’s prompt volume happens four to five days out. Shoppers are still weighing options and considering specs before they commit. Quality and performance peaks for the week at 25.6% of stated drivers, and product comparisons hits its weekly high of 11.9%.
Have your comparison content, customer reviews, and full product specs ready to surface now. This is when shoppers are building the final shortlist that drives the purchase decision.
December 22–23: the deadline rush
This is the busiest shopping window of Christmas week. With 38.9% of all prompts, the volume is driven by shoppers racing to beat the shipping cutoff. Availability signals reach their highest volume of the week as last-minute behavior intensifies. Convenience climbs to 10.3% of drivers, as buying in time becomes top priority for shoppers.
Make sure your inventory status, delivery cutoffs, and substitution options are accurate and live before this window options. There’s no room to address errors or attempt to surface updated information in answer engines after these final few days.
December 24: the final window
Prompt volume doesn’t drop off altogether on Christmas Eve, but it does ease to 15.4% of the week. During this time, intent decisively shifts toward finalizing purchases. Product information requests peak for the week at 36% as shoppers ask AI to explain, configure, and confirm before they buy.
Stage setup guidance and tutorial content well before Christmas Eve. This way, it’s ready for shoppers who are making final decisions.
December 25: an active commercial day
It’s easy to assume that Christmas Day might be a dead zone in terms of holiday shopping. But the commercial activity doesn’t stop when gifts are open, and Christmas has 14.4% of the week’s prompt volume. Electronics alone accounts for 29.7% of prompts, as everyone configures gifts.
Ahead of the holiday, prepare for the product evaluation, accessory shopping, and troubleshooting that tends to happen on Christmas Day. Continue to keep this content live rather than treating Christmas as the finish line.
The retailer pre-Christmas action plan
The shoppers in this dataset are deciding what to buy inside answer engines, often well before they reach a retail site. That changes where retailers win Christmas revenue.
This report details the specific moves retailers should make, from the categories worth prioritizing to the research questions worth answering to the elements worth adding to PDPs. Together, they give you a head start on a shift that isn’t slowing down.
The work starts now. Clean up your product feeds, build out your FAQs and reviews, write the comparison content, and fix your inventory signals. Each one requires time to take hold, so the retailers who start before October are the ones ready when demand hits.
The first step is knowing where you stand today. Measure how often answer engines surface your products against the competitors taking your share, find the gaps, and close them while there's still time to move.
Get a demo of Profound and start measuring AI visibility.
Methodology
To create this report, we relied on data from Profound’s Prompt Volumes tool, which reveals what users ask answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and DeepSeek. It’s powered by anonymized, aggregated data from real answer engine users, totaling hundreds of millions of prompts per month.
We retrieved all real user prompts flagged with commercial intent from the Profound platform for the December 20-25, 2025 period. From that full dataset, we sampled 200,000 prompts for in-depth classification and analysis of holiday shopper behavior.
Then, we classified each prompt across multiple behavioral dimensions using an automated classification script powered by GPT-4o-mini with structured outputs. Dimensions included product category and subcategory, query intent, decision driver, price sensitivity, channel preference, and day-level temporal patterns.