Back-to-school shopping offers a preview of an AI-powered holiday season. Marketers, study up.

Back-to-school season has become a dress rehearsal for the holidays. This year, it’s also becoming an early test of how AI could change the way consumers shop, offering clues to marketers already prepping their holiday campaigns now.

Consumers are still spending, albeit more cautiously. But the journey between discovering a product and buying it is increasingly splintering across social platforms, retailer websites, stores and AI assistants.

Walmart’s latest earnings offer a glimpse into how retailers are positioning themselves for that shift. The retailer reported a 5.9% increase in revenue in its fiscal second quarter, while global e-commerce sales rose by 23%. But one of its fastest-growing businesses was advertising: Walmart’s global ad revenue increased 38%, while Walmart Connect, its U.S. retail media business, grew 43%, excluding Vizio.

“We drove strong sales globally, led by digital,” Walmart said in its latest earnings report. “We’re growing faster, strengthening the economics of the business, and building a Walmart that’s even more durable for the future.”

The results come as Walmart moves deeper into the competition to own not only where consumers buy products, but where they discover them.

Back-to-school shoppers are already using AI

Back-to-school provides an early look at that changing behavior. Tinuiti calls the season a “second Q4,” with 70% of back-to-school purchases taking place in July and August. Despite pressure from higher prices, 59% of parents expect to spend more per child this year, according to Tinuiti’s Holiday Shopping Trends survey of 1,040 U.S. parents.

What is changing is how they decide what to buy. Only 32% of parents told Tinuiti they don’t plan to use an AI tool for back-to-school shopping this year. That means a majority of parents expect to use platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini for tasks including finding deals, comparing products and summarizing reviews.

That puts AI considerably closer to the transaction than the experimentation with chatbots just a few years ago. Tinuiti’s broader 2026 AI research found 48% of U.S. adults now trust AI to recommend products. ChatGPT remains the most widely used generative AI platform in its survey, at 52%, followed by Gemini at 45%.

For marketers, that creates another potential gatekeeper in the shopping journey. A parent looking for a laptop for a college student, for example, might once have started with Google, Amazon or Walmart. Now that same journey may begin by asking an AI assistant to recommend the best laptop under $800 — potentially narrowing the consideration set before the shopper ever reaches a retailer.

The fight to influence the shopper

That shift doesn’t diminish the importance of retail media. It could make the battle for influence around it more complicated.

Walmart and Amazon remain the dominant online back-to-school destinations in Tinuiti’s research, selected by 67% and 65% of parents, respectively. Nearly half, 47%, expect to shop from both.

Walmart’s advertising growth shows why that audience is so valuable. Walmart U.S. e-commerce sales grew 24% during the quarter, and e-commerce now represents roughly 23% of Walmart U.S. sales.

More digital transactions mean more signals that can potentially connect advertising exposure to purchasing behavior — one of retail media’s biggest selling points.

But AI introduces another influence point before consumers reach those retailer ecosystems. And discovery is already fragmented. Social media and in-store displays tied as the leading sources of back-to-school product and promotion discovery in Tinuiti’s study, each cited by 43% of parents.

Instead of a traditional funnel, a shopper might discover a backpack on TikTok, ask ChatGPT whether the brand is worth the price, compare alternatives on Walmart and ultimately buy it in a store. The checkout may belong to the retailer. Increasingly, the consideration may not.

Holiday season could accelerate the shift

The same dynamic is poised to become even more visible during the holiday season. Tinuiti’s 2026 Holiday Shopping Trends study found that shoppers remain cautious: 37% say they feel worse about their finances than a year ago, compared with 29% who feel better.

Yet that hasn’t translated into a broad spending pullback. Twenty-seven percent expect to spend more on holiday gifts, compared with 23% who expect to spend less, while half expect spending to remain about the same.

Online shopping could capture more of that spending. Thirty-one percent expect to increase their online holiday shopping this year, compared with 24% who plan to increase their in-store spending.

AI is becoming part of that equation too. Tinuiti is tracking how shoppers use AI to compare products, hunt for deals and evaluate purchases during the holidays, reflecting a broader change in what product discovery looks like. The agency is already advising marketers to optimize product detail pages for AI-powered shopping assistants and LLM results alongside traditional retail and search environments.

For brands, that potentially expands the definition of shelf space. Being prominent on a Walmart search results page or Amazon product category still matters. But brands increasingly need their products to be recommended by the AI systems consumers consult with before they arrive

Price still rules

For all the technology reshaping shopping, one decidedly old-school consideration remains paramount: price. Sixty-five percent of parents rank price among their three biggest back-to-school purchase considerations, while 57% cite sales and discounts. Higher grocery prices are expected to negatively impact back-to-school budgets for 63% of parents, according to the Tinuiti study.

That tension is likely to carry into the last part of the year. Consumers haven’t stopped spending. They’re becoming more deliberate about what they buy, where they buy it and which tools they use to make the decision.

For marketers, back-to-school season is offering an early glimpse of that new reality: Retail media is growing rapidly, e-commerce continues to take share and AI is inserting itself further into product discovery. The holiday season will put all three trends to a much bigger test.