In the age of AI, getting discovered is only half the battle

As AI transforms how consumers discover, compare and buy products, brands face a new challenge: it’s no longer enough to just appeal to customers. They increasingly need to appeal to the AI agents helping customers make decisions.

And that's only half the battle. Once a brand has been discovered, how does it turn that initial interaction into a lasting relationship?

The shift is already underway across Asia Pacific. Adobe's “2026 AI and digital trends report” found that 53% of APAC consumers use AI tools to search for personalised product recommendations, while 42% are open to shopping through a virtual AI concierge.

For brands, the implications extend across the entire buying journey. How can they ensure they are visible and accurately represented when consumers turn to AI tools?

These questions were at the heart of Mastercard’s “Personalization Pioneers Singapore” event on 1 October, where decision-makers across industries came together to explore how AI is reshaping the customer journey, and what it will take to turn discovery into lasting loyalty.

For Mandy Gallie, vice president of services business development at Mastercard, personalisation works on two levels. It reduces the cognitive effort involved in making decisions by filtering out irrelevant options, while helping customers feel recognised by a brand.

The distinction is important.

Relevant recommendations can make a purchase easier, but experiences that reflect a customer's preferences can also strengthen brand affinity and encourage repeat purchases. The opportunity is to move beyond simply pushing offers and use customer insights to build more meaningful relationships.

Discovery is changing, and brands need to prepare for two audiences

That challenge takes on a new dimension as AI agents begin to influence product discovery and purchasing decisions.

“It's not a question of whether or not consumers are going to delegate the tasks; it's a question of when,” said Nihal George, vice president of AI incubator and strategic accounts at Mastercard, discussing the direction of agentic commerce.

As consumers increasingly turn to AI tools to research options and narrow their choices, brands risk losing some control over how they are being discovered and represented.

An AI agent could compare products against a shopper's needs and surface only a handful of recommendations, rather than presenting a long list of search results.

That creates a very practical readiness question for businesses. If an AI agent is acting on a customer’s behalf, will it be able to find your product, understand why it is relevant, and have enough reliable information to recommend or purchase it?

Product information such as price, availability, and fulfilment information needs to remain reliable and accurate as the journey moves closer to purchase.

The topic was further explored in “The decision room: Your next growth bet” – a panel moderated by Donovan Yong, principal of service business development at Mastercard, featuring Santanu Chattopadhyay, partner leader for retail, restaurants and consumer goods at AWS, and Logan McBride, vice president of professional services at Mastercard Dynamic Yield.

Chattopadhyay described AI agents as a new type of buyer that brands need to consider. A shopper looking for running shoes, for example, may want recommendations that account for their location, the weather, and how they intend to use the shoes, rather than a generic list of products matching a keyword.

But preparing for this changing journey isn't only about making products easier to find. It also requires a broader understanding of what customers are doing and where behaviours are shifting.

Brands can learn a great deal from their own first-party data, but it only reflects the interactions they can see. Mastercard can complement those signals with broader insights into consumer spending patterns, category behaviour and market trends, helping brands understand what may be changing beyond their own customer base.

Being discovered is only the first step

Even as discovery becomes more distributed, brands retain far greater influence over what happens when a customer reaches an experience they control. That makes the next question equally important: once someone finds your brand, how do you make sure you’re the brand of choice?

McBride also spoke about the control brands retain over the customer experience when discovery takes place on third-party AI platforms.

While businesses have limited control over how their products are surfaced by external AI platforms, they have greater control over the experiences they build on their own channels.

This is where personalisation becomes part of the wider buying journey rather than the story itself. Testing, customer insight, and decisioning can help brands understand intent and improve relevance across the web, app, and other interactions.

Mastercard Dynamic Yield, for example, positions its Experience OS around building, testing, and scaling relevant experiences powered by AI across the journey, including segmentation, targeting, journey orchestration, and experimentation.

But automation alone isn't the objective.

Adobe's research found that 70% of APAC consumers want AI-driven interactions to feel human, while 38% said they would stop engaging if they discovered they were speaking to AI when they had expected a human.

The practical takeaway is therefore not to automate every interaction, but to be deliberate about where technology removes friction and where human intervention adds value.

And, as experimentation accelerates, trust will be just as important.

Customers need confidence that AI-driven shopping experiences will respect their preferences and that transactions will be secure.

As AI agents take a greater role in discovery and purchasing, relevance alone won’t be enough. Consumers and businesses also need confidence that an agent is legitimate, acting with permission and operating within a user’s intent. Mastercard describes this emerging requirement as “know your agent”.

Brands must therefore look beyond the interface to the underlying foundations, including reliable product information, payment security, and the ability to deliver what has been promised.

Experiment for the customer journey, not just the conversion

Prathamesh Hoshing, business performance lead at Loewe, explained why optimisation for conversion is not necessarily the only objective in its business philosophy, “Human touch in a digital world: The Loewe playbook”.

For Loewe, the goal is not simply to make every digital interaction end in a faster purchase. The brand must also preserve the craftsmanship, storytelling and service that shape the luxury experience. Some products, for instance, are better introduced through a store or client adviser than through a straightforward online transaction.

Hoshing shared how Loewe tests changes to its website and customer journeys – from product recommendations to navigation and calls to action. Not every experiment succeeds, with some changes reducing engagement and requiring the team to reconsider its approach.

But even an unsuccessful experiment offers an opportunity to learn more about customers and what they value.

He added that the data should inform decisions, not dictate them. A change that improves one digital metric may not necessarily support the wider customer experience, particularly when a brand’s value rests on more than an immediate conversion.

As AI makes it easier to automate recommendations and optimise journeys, businesses still need to decide which parts of the experience should remain deliberately curated.

Retention needs to be designed into the journey

Acquisition, however, is only one side of sustainable customer growth. As consumers gain more ways to compare options and brands, the ability to encourage repeat visits becomes increasingly important.

“Being chosen again costs a fraction of being found,” emphasised Charline Boccara, vice president of loyalty and partnerships at Accor.

For Boccara, that means thinking beyond points and discounts. In March 2025, Accor’s loyalty programme, ALL, announced it had reached 100 million members, doubling its membership over five years, with members spending more than twice as much as non-members.

But the opportunity goes beyond growing membership. It is about creating more reasons for members to engage with Accor across different occasions and beyond the hotel stay itself.

Accor has been extending its loyalty ecosystem through partnerships and experiences that give members more opportunities to engage with the programme in everyday life. This includes access to major sporting events and exclusive culinary experiences, creating emotional value beyond the transaction.

Boccara shared that members who participated in these experiences reported higher satisfaction and were more likely to return.

AI could add another layer to that relationship, helping members discover experiences relevant to their preferences while giving hotel teams better customer context to deliver more consistent services. But for Accor, that doesn't mean automating every interaction.

As Boccara puts it: “How do we automate the member profile, but not the moment?”

If there was one message that emerged from Mastercard’s "Personalization Pioneers Singapore", it was that discovery, personalisation, and loyalty can no longer be treated as separate priorities.

As AI reshapes how customers discover and choose, brands have an opportunity to connect these moments more meaningfully. Because being found may get a brand into consideration, but creating experiences worth returning for is what turns transactions into lasting relationships.

To learn how AI, data, personalisation, and loyalty can help businesses connect with customers across the buying journey, explore Mastercard's consumer acquisition and engagement solutions.

This article was written in collaboration with Mastercard.