The Rise of AI-Assisted Shopping: A Study of Consumer Purchase Behaviour in India

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved from a back-end retail efficiency tool to a front-facing influence on how consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase products. India, with the world's second largest base of monthly ChatGPT users and among the highest global rates of generative AI adoption for shopping, offers a distinctive setting to examine this shift. This paper reviews the current state of AI-driven consumer behaviour research in India, synthesising findings from industry surveys (Capgemini, EY, BCG, Statista) and academic literature on technology acceptance and AI-enabled personalisation. It proposes a structured framework, a set of testable hypotheses, and a questionnaire-based methodology to empirically examine how AI-enabled personalisation, perceived trust, convenience, and data-privacy concern jointly shape purchase intention across demographic segments in India, including the narrowing metro versus tier-2/tier-3 adoption gap. Findings from secondary sources indicate that a majority of Indian consumers already use or intend to use AI shopping tools that AI-driven recommendations measurably influence purchase decisions, and that trust in human support remains an important complement to AI. The paper concludes with managerial implications for Indian retailers and e-commerce platforms, along with the limitations and future research directions of the proposed study.