AI and agents account for $262 billion of 2025 holiday spend
UK and global markets see strong sales growth amid rising prices
Today, Salesforce unveiled its 2025 holiday shopping findings (Nov. 1 – Dec 31), reporting record-breaking online sales of $1.29 trillion globally and £28 billion ($38 billion) in the UK, with strong influence from AI and agents. Amid higher average selling prices, year-over-year (YOY) sales growth hit 7% globally and 5.5% in the UK, proving consumer buying remained strong from the start to finish of holiday shopping.
UK shoppers showed remarkable resilience throughout the holiday season, even driving a 12% YOY global increase in sales in the last two weeks of December, outpacing growth in the first half of the season. All the while, AI and agents powered a massive portion of the holidays, driving 20% of all retail sales and fueling $262 billion in revenue through personalized recommendations and deeper customer engagement.
2025 holiday shoppers embrace AI and agents
This year marked a turning point for the next wave of AI-powered search as the share of global traffic from third-party AI search channels like ChatGPT and Perplexity doubled compared to last year. While these channels are still growing, they deliver an exceptionally high-intent shopper. In fact, shoppers referred to retailer websites from AI-powered search channels converted nine times more often than those coming through social media referrals.
Retailers’ own branded agents also contributed to sales growth – while boosting their teams’ efficiency. Companies that deployed their own AI agents, like Salesforce customers Pandora, SharkNinja, and Funko, saw a 59% higher growth rate — averaging a 6.2% YoY sales increase versus 3.9%. Shoppers embraced this technology more than ever, using retailers’ AI and agents for customer service 126% more during the holiday rush than in the two months prior.
As the season peaked, AI agents became key to always-on customer service. December saw a 66% jump in the number of agentic AI-powered service conversations over November, while interactions during the week of Christmas and Boxing Day grew 12% YoY. Beyond answering their questions, these agents also took direct action on behalf of customers, handling 142% more tasks than they had in the prior two months. These tasks include updating delivery addresses and initiating returns, which are manual, resource-intensive tasks for human reps.
Go deeper: 2025 holiday shopping insights
- Stores remain a fixture of the shopping season: Nearly one in five orders this season was made via BOPIS. However, as shoppers rushed to finish their last-minute gifting, that rate climbed to one in three during the final five days before Christmas.
- BOPIS usage peaked on Monday, Dec. 22, when 35% of all online orders were placed for in-store pickup.
- The rate of returns rises: More than $181 billion of global online purchases made between November 1 and December 31 have already been returned. This accounts for 14% of all purchases and marks a 10% increase in returns from last year.
- Items purchased in-store during the final four days before Christmas face the highest likelihood of being returned in January.
- Consumer purchasing power trends toward the positive: Across the holiday season, the average selling price (ASP) increased 7% YOY worldwide, and even higher in the UK, where prices jumped 9%. Consumers, however, were not dissuaded by higher prices — order volumes this season moderately increased 3% globally compared with last year.
- Consumers browse heavily before they buy: While this holiday season was defined by a resilient consumer, consumers did more research before converting. Online traffic grew 13% globally and 10% in the UK. over last year’s volumes, significantly eclipsing last year’s global growth rates of 1%.
This wasn’t just a bigger holiday season than last year; it was a more efficient, intelligent one.
Caila Schwartz, Director, Consumer Insights, Salesforce
“The 2025 holiday season marked a definitive shift to a new era of ‘agentic’ shopping. While shoppers remained resilient in the face of higher prices, the real story was how retailers leaned on AI and agents to navigate the holiday rush. Agents didn’t just drive $262 billion in sales through high-intent discovery; they became the operational heroes of the season — handling a 142% surge in tasks like returns and shipping updates. This wasn’t just a bigger holiday season than last year; it was a more efficient, intelligent one.” — Caila Schwartz, Director, Consumer Insights, Salesforce
Explore further:
- Compare end of year findings to Salesforce’s 2025 holiday predictions
- Visit the Holiday Shopping HQ for real-time global shopping results
- Learn more about how AI-powered search is changing the game for retailers
2025 Salesforce holiday insights and predictions methodology
Powered by Agentforce 360, Agentforce Commerce, Agentforce Marketing, and Agentforce Service, Salesforce analyzed aggregated data to produce holiday insights from the activity of more than 1.5 billion global shoppers across more than 89 countries, with a focus on 18 key markets: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), Switzerland, Latin America (LAM), the Middle East and Africa (MEA), Eastern Europe, Belgium, and the Nordics. This battery of benchmarks provides a deep look into the last nine quarters and the current state of digital commerce. Several factors are applied to extrapolate macroeconomic figures for the broader retail industry. These and other results are not indicative of Salesforce performance.
The prediction data that we present are from proprietary Salesforce research. The calculations we use blend together first-party and third-party data, as well as several market assumptions.
