Young Buyers and GenAI Are Rewriting B2B Ecommerce

A Forrester report, written up by Digital Commerce 360, describes younger B2B buyers taking a large share of high-value purchases, and generative AI sitting inside those purchases.

What the report counted

• 52% of global B2B buyers regularly close million-dollar deals, and they do it with the vendor's account representatives.
• 92% of buyers who use genAI for major purchases say it leads to "better business outcomes."
• 94% of buyers involved in million-dollar transactions are already using genAI or plan to add it soon.
• 96% of younger buyers are dissatisfied to some degree. The reasons named are technical glitches, weak implementation, and a lack of DEI initiatives.

Buyers who use the AI describe three effects: less need for the usual buyer-vendor back-and-forth, fewer hours of research, and a faster close.

What that asks of a PIM

The buying process these numbers describe is short, personal, and automated. A PIM that only stores a record will not feed that. The record has to be accurate and complete enough for the buyer and for the genAI the buyer is using. Speed of update matters as much as the attributes themselves.

Younger buyers also want omnichannel options, and a large share of them already find the current purchase experience lacking. Product data does not fix a bad implementation or a missing DEI program. It does decide whether the catalog an AI summarizes is the catalog you meant to sell.

Source: Digital Commerce 360