Young shoppers are discovering products through AI and asking stores for the opposite experience. Retailers need teams that can deliver both, and that usually means different people.
Retail Dive's look at how Gen Z and Gen Alpha will shop this holiday season lands on a tension most retailers already feel. The youngest shoppers are the heaviest users of AI for product discovery, and they are also the ones most likely to say the algorithm is boxing them in. They want a chatbot that can find the right gift in seconds, and they want a store that feels nothing like a feed.
That is not a contradiction to resolve. It is two jobs to staff. One is making your products findable and accurate inside AI tools you do not control. The other is building a physical and brand experience worth leaving the phone for. Very few people are strong at both, which is why this is a hiring conversation as much as a marketing one.
The numbers in the piece point in two directions at once. According to Attentive, roughly two-thirds of shoppers used AI to help make a purchase in the past three months, and among Gen Z that share climbs to 80%. Retailers are leaning in: Target ran an AI gift finder for the 2025 holidays, and Kohl's has rolled out a similar tool this year.
At the same time, JLL research found that 45% of Gen Z feel online recommendations limit what they are allowed to like. JLL also found that 72% of consumers have left a store earlier than planned because they felt overwhelmed, rising to 81% among neurodivergent shoppers. Emily Albright Miller, JLL's executive vice president of retail design, put the takeaway simply: shoppers are tired of endless choice, and they want stores that are sensory and tactile.
Gen Alpha, the cohort that researchers generally say began around 2010, adds another layer. Vlerick Business School professor Joeri Van den Bergh's research on U.S. Gen Alphas identified four distinct groups, organized around self-expression and influencers, celebrity and pop culture, trends and appearance, and environmental and social concerns. His point is that there is no single Gen Alpha strategy. Gen Z Planet founder Hana Ben-Shabat adds that young shoppers value personalization and cocreation, and suggests tools that let kids share saved products with their parents, who are, after all, still the ones paying.
| Signal | What it changes | Who has to own it |
|---|---|---|
| 80% of Gen Z used AI to buy | Discovery happens in tools the retailer doesn't control | DTC site, product content, and retail technology |
| 45% of Gen Z say recommendations limit them | The store becomes the place for discovery outside the algorithm | Store experience and creative |
| 72% left a store feeling overwhelmed | More choice is not better; curation wins | Merchandising and buying |
| Gen Alpha splits into four groups | "Young shoppers" can't be planned as one audience | Analytics and data science |
| Kids want to share picks with parents | The influencer and the buyer are two different people | Brand, shopper, and loyalty marketing |
When a shopper asks a chatbot for a gift idea, the AI can only recommend what it can understand. Product titles, attributes, sizing, availability, and imagery all become inputs to someone else's recommendation engine. A messy catalog does not just look bad on your own site anymore. It quietly drops you out of the answer.
That work sits with DTC Site Management and Retail & Digital Technology. The profile to look for is someone who treats product data as a revenue lever, not an admin task, and who can tell you how their last catalog performed in Google, Amazon, and AI-driven search, not just on the brand site. Our guide to hiring a Site Operations Manager covers the core of this role.
If nearly three out of four shoppers have walked out of a store because it was too much, the answer is not another endcap. It is a tighter, more intentional assortment, especially in categories where Gen Z and Gen Alpha shop heavily, like beauty and apparel. Piper Sandler's fall 2025 teen survey named Sephora the No. 1 beauty destination for teens, a reminder that young shoppers reward retailers whose stores feel organized around discovery rather than sheer volume.
This is a Merchandising & Buying problem. The strongest candidates can show you an assortment they cut and explain what happened to productivity per foot afterward. Buyers who only talk about what they added are usually not the right fit for a curation mandate. We covered how planning roles are changing in how to hire a Merchandise Planner for omnichannel retail.
Miller's argument is that the store gives young shoppers room to break out of what an algorithm thinks they like. That only works if the space is designed for it: tactile product, room to try things, and an environment that does not overwhelm. Coach is one of the brands working to court Gen Z through personalization and in-store experience.
The hires behind this sit across Creative & UX/UI and store experience leadership, and the best of them think about the physical journey the way a UX designer thinks about a checkout flow. We saw the same pattern in Arc'teryx's climbing concept store, where the store's value comes from what happens there, not just what is on the shelves.
Van den Bergh's four Gen Alpha groups want very different things. A kid drawn to environmental and social causes and a kid driven by celebrity and pop culture will respond to completely different products, messages, and channels. A single "Gen Alpha campaign" will underperform with most of them.
Segmentation like this is Analytics & Data Science work. Look for analysts and data scientists who have built behavioral or attitudinal segments and then watched them change a merchandising or media decision. The ability to connect a segment to an action is what separates useful analytics hires from report builders.
With Gen Alpha, the person who wants the product and the person who buys it are rarely the same. Ben-Shabat's idea of letting kids share saved items with parents is really a two-audience strategy: brand-building that earns the kid's interest, and shopper and loyalty programs that make it easy for the parent to say yes. Van den Bergh also urges care with digital and AI tools aimed at children, which raises the bar for anyone building those experiences.
That puts Brand Management and Shopper & Trade Marketing at the center, along with whoever owns loyalty. Our post on Carter's rebrand for Gen Z parents showed how a brand-level bet still has to be backed by merchandising and data underneath it.
The AI side of this generation rewards precision: clean data, accurate product information, and fast answers. The store side rewards the opposite: fewer choices, more feel, and room to wander. The retailers that win with young shoppers will hire for both and stop expecting one team to do it all.
It is mid-October, so any permanent hire you start now will join after the holiday peak. That is not a reason to wait. The person who owns your 2027 plan for young shoppers needs this season's results to build from, and the strongest candidates in these practice areas are hard to move in January once bonuses are paid and plans are set.
A few practical steps for the next month:
According to Attentive data cited by Retail Dive in October 2026, about two-thirds of shoppers used AI to help make a purchase in the previous three months, and that share rises to 80% among Gen Z.
Yes. JLL research found that 45% of Gen Z feel online recommendations limit what they are allowed to like, and stores give young shoppers a place to discover things outside an algorithm. The same research found 72% of consumers have left a store early because they felt overwhelmed, so the store has to be curated and sensory, not crowded.
Five functions carry most of the work: DTC site and product content leads who make a catalog readable to AI shopping tools, merchandising and buying leaders who curate a tighter assortment, store and creative experience leads who design sensory spaces, analytics talent who can segment young shoppers instead of treating them as one group, and brand and shopper marketers who reach both kids and the parents who pay.
For a permanent leadership hire, a mid-October search will almost certainly land after the holiday peak. That still makes now the right time to open the search, because the person you hire will own the 2027 plan, and this season's results are exactly what they will need to learn from.
Source: Retail Dive, October 13, 2026, citing research from Attentive, JLL, Piper Sandler, Vlerick Business School, and Gen Z Planet.