TL;DR

Before you orderOffer from Amazon

Get your next haul delivered free with Prime

• Fast, free delivery on millions of items
• Prime Video, Amazon Music and more included
• Member-only deals all year

Start your free Prime trial →Free trial for eligible customers · Cancel anytime

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.Hide

Kohl’s is taking its AI gift-finding and shopping assistant into the holiday quarter after saying users convert at higher rates and generate more revenue per visit. The retailer has not disclosed how many customers use the tool or how much their results exceed site averages, leaving the season as its first full test at scale.

Kohl’s is taking its AI shopping assistant into the holiday quarter after CEO Michael Bender told analysts that customers who use it show stronger conversion and higher revenue per visit, though adoption is still small. The retailer’s holiday season will be its first full-quarter test of whether the tool can help more shoppers find gifts and complete purchases.

Kohl’s launched its Gift Finder in April, initially for Mother’s Day shopping. Built with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, the assistant asks about a recipient’s interests, hobbies and style, then suggests products shoppers can browse and add to a cart without leaving the chat. Customers can also upload photos to search for similar items.

In July, Kohl’s expanded the experience into a broader shopping assistant on Kohls.com and its app. It can respond to requests such as finding current deals, compare products, search by image and guide customers through store pickup and discount codes. The retailer built the gifting agent on the same Google platform as an internal analytics agent for associates, Kohl’s director of enterprise data platform, analytics and AI enablement Kyle Luchinski said in a Google Cloud case study.

Bender discussed the assistant on Kohl’s second-quarter earnings call on August 26. “Adoption is still small, but customers who engage with our AI shopping assistant are showing stronger conversion and higher revenue per visit,” he said, according to Digital Commerce 360. Kohl’s also reported that digital sales rose 2.8% in the quarter and accounted for 27% of net sales, up from 26% a year earlier. The company has not said what share of those sales involved the assistant.

Can AI Turn Gift Searches Into Sales?

The assistant targets a specific friction point in online shopping: gift buyers often know the recipient and their budget but are uncertain about which product to choose. By asking questions and presenting suggestions inside a shopping conversation, Kohl’s is trying to connect product discovery directly to checkout, rather than relying on customers to translate a vague need into search terms and navigate results.

That matters because Kohl’s has identified conversion as a digital weakness. Chief Financial Officer Jill Timm said in March that digital sales were flat for 2025 because lower conversion offset higher traffic. She pointed to improved inventory availability and product findability as part of the response. If the assistant helps shoppers find relevant items and buy them, it could support the retailer’s effort to get more value from online visits. But the company’s reported user results do not yet show whether that effect can be reproduced across a large share of shoppers.

Consumer research also suggests that AI shopping tools are being used for price discovery. In a PYMNTS Intelligence survey, 46% of consumers who had shopped with AI assistance said they used it to find the best price or deal. And 53% said a lower price could persuade them to leave a large marketplace for a brand’s own site. Those findings point to an opportunity for retailers to serve customers who are comparing offers, but they do not establish that Kohl’s assistant itself changes where consumers shop.

From Mother’s Day Tool to Holiday Assistant

Kohl’s introduced the Gift Finder for Mother’s Day in April, then broadened it in July from a gifting feature to a general shopping assistant. The expansion added tools for deal requests, product comparisons, image-based search and help with pickup and discount codes. The holiday quarter will be the first period in which the expanded assistant is operating through the full seasonal shopping cycle, when gift discovery is a central use case.

The retailer has experimented with AI-powered gifting before. In December 2023, Kohl’s introduced Storybook Magic, which created a personalized holiday poem around a gift recommendation. Target introduced an AI holiday gift finder last November, using information such as a recipient’s age and interests to shape recommendations, according to Retail Dive. These examples show retailers testing conversational or personalized approaches to gift selection, but they do not provide a direct comparison of performance.

The broader consumer backdrop is also changing. A PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Will the 2026 Shopping Season Go Agentic?,” said about 132 million people had made a retail purchase with AI assistance and 22% of consumers now start online research in an AI tool. The report was based on surveys of 2,061 U.S. consumers and 60 retail merchants conducted through August. These figures describe reported shopping behavior across the market, not usage of Kohl’s specific product.

Usage and Conversion Figures Remain Private

Kohl’s has described assistant adoption as small, but has not disclosed the number or proportion of shoppers using it. The retailer also has not quantified how much higher conversion or revenue per visit is among users, identified the comparison group, or said whether the results hold across different product categories and shopping periods.

The available figures also do not establish that the assistant caused the increase in quarterly digital sales. Kohl’s reported digital sales growth and the share of net sales separately from Bender’s comments on assistant users; it did not attribute the overall digital result to the tool. It remains unclear whether holiday shoppers will use the assistant at greater scale, whether its suggestions lead to completed purchases, or how its performance compares with ordinary search and browsing.

Holiday Results Will Test Wider Reach

The next test is the holiday quarter, when Kohl’s will have a longer and busier period to see whether shoppers use the assistant for gift ideas, deals and purchases. The key indicators will be whether adoption grows and whether the retailer continues to see stronger conversion and revenue per visit among people who engage with it.

Kohl’s has not announced a target for assistant usage or a date for releasing more detailed performance figures. Further information may come through later earnings updates, but until the company provides usage levels and comparable conversion data, the scale of the tool’s contribution to holiday sales will remain uncertain.

Source: rss

Key Questions

What does Kohl’s AI shopping assistant do?

It asks shoppers about a gift recipient’s interests and style, recommends products, and lets users browse and add items to their cart within the chat. Its broader version can also compare products, search by image, show deals and provide guidance on pickup and discount codes.

When did Kohl’s launch the Gift Finder?

Kohl’s introduced the Gift Finder in April for Mother’s Day shopping and expanded it into a broader shopping assistant on its website and app in July.

Has Kohl’s said how many people use the assistant?

No. CEO Michael Bender said adoption remains small, but Kohl’s has not disclosed a user count, the share of shoppers who use it or how much higher their conversion is than a comparison group.

Did the assistant cause Kohl’s digital sales to rise?

Kohl’s reported that second-quarter digital sales increased 2.8% and reached 27% of net sales, compared with 26% a year earlier. The company has not said that the assistant caused that increase.

Source: rss