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B2B Buyer Behavior Has Changed in the AI Era
B2B Buyer Behavior Has Changed in the AI Era

March 26, 2025

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There’s a shift happening in B2B purchasing that too many companies are still underestimating. As AI becomes embedded in how decisions are made, the buyer journey itself is being redefined.

This is no longer about optimizing internal marketing operations with AI tools. It’s about understanding that your buyers are already using AI—and your sales and marketing strategies need to evolve in response.

AI Is Already Influencing Vendor Shortlisting

According to McKinsey’s latest B2B Pulse report, 20% of business decision-makers are using generative AI to research suppliers. Another 23% are in the process of doing so. These aren’t tech pilots—they’re already influencing which vendors make it to the shortlist.

This means a growing portion of vendor evaluation happens before your sales team is ever contacted. If your messaging lacks clarity, or your value proposition isn’t represented well in formats that AI can parse, you risk being excluded before the conversation begins.

Remote Buying Is Now the Norm—Even at Enterprise Scale

McKinsey also reports that today’s buyers engage across an average of 10 channels, and a significant percentage are willing to commit to high-value purchases—over $500,000—without meeting a sales rep in person. Among “Seeker” buyers, 69% are already comfortable with these large-scale remote transactions.

E-commerce is now a central revenue channel in B2B. For organizations that offer it, it accounts for 34% of total sales. One in three companies has increased their digital sales investment by over 11% in just the past year.

In this environment, marketing and sales cannot afford to operate in silos. Digital assets need to do more than generate leads—they must carry the weight of trust-building, solution education, and buyer enablement, often without human intervention.

AI Also Shapes Buyer Perception

The influence of AI goes beyond discovery. Research from MIT shows that how an AI system is introduced—what it appears to “stand for”—shapes how users perceive its reliability and empathy. When buyers interact with brand-facing AI agents (like chatbots) or use third-party AI tools to summarize product options, they’re forming opinions before they ever speak to a person.

That means your brand is no longer defined only by what you publish—it’s shaped by how AI systems interpret and present that information to buyers. If the systems are drawing from inconsistent, vague, or poorly structured data, your reputation suffers before you’ve even entered the conversation.

The Gap Between Expectation and Delivery

Another trend worth noting: most buyers expect personalization, but don’t feel AI delivers it effectively. According to Forbes, 67% of consumers expect brands to tailor interactions to them—but only 26% believe AI is doing this well.

This mismatch creates risk. If AI-driven marketing feels off-target or irrelevant, it can diminish trust. The solution isn’t to scale back—it’s to design personalization strategies that are anchored in first-party data, clear value exchanges, and smooth transitions between AI-driven and human-led experiences.

Marketing Strategy Needs to Catch Up

The core takeaway is this: AI is now a permanent layer in how buyers discover, evaluate, and decide. Whether they’re using tools like ChatGPT to identify vendors or interacting with your own AI-powered touchpoints, their behavior is shaped by systems that summarize, re-rank, and reframe what they encounter.

In this context, marketing strategy can’t be limited to messaging and martech. It must address how AI interprets and delivers your value proposition. It must also anticipate that buyers may form a point of view without ever visiting your website or speaking to your sales team.

A Strategic Reset Is Due

This is a critical moment for CMOs, CSOs, and marketing heads. The buyer journey has changed. The tools, expectations, and channels that define decision-making today are different from even two years ago.

Companies that want to remain competitive need to rethink how they align marketing and sales—and how they integrate AI as both a driver of internal efficiency and a lens through which buyers perceive them.

Read the full blog post here


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