Kohl’s Takes Its AI Gift Finder Into the Holiday Quarter

Gift buyers often know who they’re shopping for for and what they’ll spend. What they have no idea is which product to select. Kohl’s is betting {that a} dialog closes that hole quicker than a search field. The retailer launched a Gift Finder for Mother’s Day this April. Built with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, the AI agent asks about the recipient’s pursuits, hobbies and magnificence, and gives merchandise that buyers can browse and add to a cart from inside the chat. Shoppers can even add photographs to search out related gadgets.

In July, Kohl’s expanded the device right into a procuring assistant on Kohls.com and its app. The assistant solutions requests like “show me the best deals right now,” compares merchandise, searches by picture and walks buyers by means of retailer pickup and low cost codes. Kohl’s constructed the gifting agent on the similar Google platform that runs an inside analytics agent for associates, Kyle Luchinski, Kohl’s director of enterprise knowledge platform, analytics and AI enablement, said in a Google Cloud case examine. “By bringing discovery and purchase together, customers can shop frictionlessly,” he mentioned.

Early Users Convert Better

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Kohl’s put numbers on the assistant for the first time on its second-quarter name. “Adoption is still small, but customers who engage with our AI shopping assistant are showing stronger conversion and higher revenue per visit,” CEO Michael Bender informed analysts on Aug. 26, Digital Commerce 360 reported. Digital gross sales rose 2.8% in the quarter and reached 27% of web gross sales, up from 26% a 12 months earlier, Kohl’s said.

Conversion is the drawback the assistant was constructed to repair. Digital gross sales had been flat for all of 2025 as a result of decrease conversion canceled out larger site visitors, Chief Financial Officer Jill Timm informed analysts in March, Digital Commerce 360 reported. Timm mentioned the resolution was higher stock availability and findability. Kohl’s has not disclosed what number of buyers use the assistant or by how a lot their conversion exceeds the web site common.

The Holiday Quarter Is the First Full Test

Kohl’s has tried AI gifting earlier than. In December 2023, it launched Storybook Magic, a device that wrote a customized vacation poem round a present suggestion, PYMNTS reported. Last November, Target launched an AI vacation present finder that constructed suggestions from a recipient’s age and pursuits, Retail Dive reported.

Shoppers are already utilizing AI for the a part of the journey Kohl’s needs to personal. Among customers who shopped with AI assist, 46% used it to search out the finest value or deal, and 53% mentioned a cheaper price may persuade them to go away a big market and purchase from a model’s personal web site, in response to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Will the 2026 Shopping Season Go Agentic?,” based mostly on surveys of two,061 U.S. customers and 60 retail retailers fielded by means of August. About 132 million folks have made a retail buy with AI help, the report discovered, and 22% now begin on-line analysis in an AI device.

The upcoming vacation quarter is the place Kohl’s finds out whether or not the assistant can convert present buyers at scale.

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