AI Search
Optimove surveyed 648 US consumers in April 2026: 49% now use AI tools for gift recommendations, with omnichannel shopping reshaping Mother's Day purchases.
Optimove today published its 2026 Mother’s Day Shopping Report, a study based on a survey of 648 U.S. consumers conducted in April 2026. The findings reveal a measurable shift in how shoppers approach seasonal gift-buying, with nearly half turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for gift ideas – and a clear majority planning to blend in-store and online channels in a single purchase journey.
The report, released April 23, 2026, comes from Optimove Insights, the analytical research arm of Optimove, a marketing technology company serving over 500 brands globally. The survey targeted adults aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more, and covered 17 questions with corresponding charts across topics including discovery behavior, decision-making, messaging, payment methods, and omnichannel channel use.
The headline figure is stark. According to the report, 49% of respondents say they regularly use AI tools for shopping ideas or gift recommendations. A further 23% use these tools occasionally, meaning that nearly three-quarters of the survey population has interacted with AI-powered tools at some point during a shopping journey. Only 12% say they prefer to research independently, while 16% say they do not currently use AI but are open to doing so.
This finding sits alongside data published in October 2025, when a Zeta Global survey found that 83% of AI users planned to rely on AI for holiday gift decisions that season. The Optimove figure, measured in April 2026 specifically for Mother’s Day, is lower but still significant given the occasion’s more personal character. Gift-giving for mothers carries emotional weight that generic holiday shopping may not, which makes the 49% figure a meaningful data point about how AI tool adoption is extending beyond transactional decisions into emotionally loaded ones.
Boston Consulting Group and Moloco, in research released January 21, 2026, found that 67% of senior marketing leaders expected high levels of AI-driven disruption to consumer behavior. The Optimove report now provides evidence from the consumer side – not just marketer expectations – that the disruption is already underway at the point of gift selection.
One of the more nuanced findings in the report concerns how strongly shoppers pre-determine their behavior. According to the study, 80% of respondents say they usually or always decide where they will shop before they begin searching. This might suggest a closed market – one in which brand loyalty and pre-formed preferences leave little room for discovery. The data complicate that assumption significantly.
Despite that pre-determination, 54% of respondents say they try new brands in at least half of their shopping experiences. And 64% say they are likely or very likely to purchase from a new or unfamiliar online merchant. The report’s conclusion is that intent and commitment are not the same thing. Shoppers arrive with a plan, but that plan is actively tested during research, comparison, and the discovery of alternatives.
“It is an active process in which discovery, relevance, and timing can truly shape the outcome,” the report states.
The three most popular gift categories among respondents are flowers (63%), jewelry (59%), and clothing or accessories (55%). Gift cards follow at 45%, and experiences such as spa visits or dinners at 33%. Only 8% of respondents say they do not buy Mother’s Day gifts at all.
When asked to identify the single most important factor in choosing a Mother’s Day gift, 51% of respondents named quality. Personalization came second at 22%, followed by price at 18%. Convenience ranked a distant fourth at just 5%.
The framing shifts when examining what motivates behavior rather than stated priorities. Nearly 85% of consumers say quality is the deciding factor when trying a new brand – but a close 80% also cite price as a key influencer in that same decision. These figures point to a market where quality sets the floor but price determines whether a transaction actually happens.
The role of price extends further. According to the report, 44% of respondents say that better prices would motivate them to shop at an unplanned location, effectively overriding pre-formed channel preferences. Separately, 69% of respondents confirm that personalization is important to their overall shopping experience.
What makes this data set useful for marketers is the gap it identifies between what consumers say matters and what actually moves them. Quality messaging may establish credibility, but price is shown to be a behavioral trigger – the lever that converts a browser into a buyer, particularly at unplanned touchpoints.
The report provides precise data on when Mother’s Day purchases actually occur. According to the findings, 26% of respondents say they typically buy one month or more in advance, and 35% buy approximately two weeks ahead of the date. A further 24% buy about one week before. Only 8% purchase on Mother’s Day itself or the day before.
This compressed front-loading of purchases has direct implications for when marketing activity needs to be deployed. The window is not the final week – it is the four to six weeks leading up to the occasion.
Price can compress that window even further. When asked whether an early sale would motivate them to buy ahead of when they had planned, 80% said yes. This is among the stronger data points in the report: it suggests that promotional timing, not just promotional depth, is a critical variable in driving conversion.
However, price alone does not capture attention. When respondents were asked what would most likely cause them to open a marketing message from a brand, relevance came first at 36% – defined as an offer for a product they were interested in at that specific moment. Personalization beyond just a name followed at 34%. Special offers or discounts came in at only 14%. A catchy subject line registered at 1%.
The implication is that promotional messages that lead with discounts but lack specificity are significantly less effective than messages that reflect an understanding of what the shopper is actually looking for. According to the report, “the most effective conversion strategy is not simply giving discounts earlier, but making the offer feel relevant and personal, at the right time.”
The channel behavior data in the report shows that Mother’s Day shopping in 2026 will predominantly be omnichannel. According to the findings, 47% of shoppers plan to buy gifts both in person and online. Only 27% plan to shop exclusively in stores, and 26% plan to shop exclusively online.
Greeting card behavior follows a similar pattern. Among those who plan to buy cards, 30% intend to purchase both online and physical versions, 31% will buy physical only, and 20% will buy online only. Nineteen percent say they will not buy a Mother’s Day card.
In-store price-checking via mobile is widespread. According to the report, 46% of respondents say they very often check prices online while in physical stores, and 35% say they do so often. Combined, 81% of respondents confirm this behavior occurs at least frequently. Channel switching remains possible even for shoppers who have pre-determined where they will buy: 44% say better prices at another retailer would prompt them to change their planned purchase location.
Payment method data underlines how digitized the transaction layer has become even in physical retail. According to the report, 97% of respondents prefer to pay with credit cards, debit cards, or digital wallets rather than cash. Credit cards were preferred by 56% of respondents, debit cards by 30%, and digital wallets including PayPal by 11%. Cash was selected by just 3%.
This has relevance beyond checkout: it means that even when a Mother’s Day purchase happens in a brick-and-mortar store, the data trail it leaves is digital. That has implications for attribution, loyalty programs, and the ability to close the loop between digital advertising and physical sales.
The convergence of AI-assisted discovery, pre-determined but fluid intent, and multi-channel purchasing creates a complex but mappable consumer journey. Several factors from the Optimove report matter directly for marketing practitioners.
First, the AI adoption figure. The 49% of regular AI tool users for gift ideas represents a substantial audience that is being influenced upstream of any brand-controlled touchpoint. If a shopper asks ChatGPT or Gemini for Mother’s Day jewelry suggestions before visiting any retailer’s website, the brand has to be present or referenced in that AI response to even enter the consideration set. This connects to broader discussion about how AI search is disrupting consumer discovery and changing what it means to appear at the top of a funnel.
Second, the timing data reframes the seasonal marketing calendar. With 61% of purchases happening one month to two weeks before the occasion, the relevant window for influencing Mother’s Day purchases is largely over by the final week. Brands that deploy significant budget in the last few days before the date are likely reaching a small minority of procrastinating buyers, not the majority who have already decided.
Third, the relevance-over-discount finding matters for message construction. The 36% who say relevance is the primary trigger for opening a brand message, compared to 14% who cite discounts, suggests that segmentation quality – knowing what a given customer is actually looking for – outperforms blanket promotional pricing as a message driver. Research tracking AI tool use patterns in marketing has shown that sophisticated personalization and segmentation are among the areas where AI assistance in marketing operations is growing fastest.
Fourth, the omnichannel data creates a measurement challenge. When 47% of buyers plan to use both online and physical channels for the same purchase journey, attribution becomes difficult to construct correctly. A shopper might discover a product through a targeted email, check the price in-store via mobile, and complete the purchase at the physical till using a debit card. The Optimove report notes that digital wallets and cards dominate payment even in physical environments, which provides one potential link for connecting digital advertising spend to offline purchase outcomes.
The retail media industry has been grappling with this measurement gap. As covered on PPC Land, only 12% of commerce media networks can seamlessly activate and measure campaigns across onsite, offsite, and in-store environments, despite omnichannel behavior being the consumer default rather than the exception.
Optimove describes itself as the creator of what it calls Positionless Marketing, a framework that allows marketing teams to execute personalization and campaign orchestration without fixed role dependencies between analysis, creative, and deployment functions. The company says this approach has been shown to improve campaign efficiency by 88%.
For two consecutive years, the company has been positioned as a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs. Optimove says it embedded AI into its platform as early as 2012. Its platform currently includes Optimove Engage and Orchestrate for cross-channel campaign decisioning; Optimove Personalize, a digital personalization engine; and Optimove Gamify, a loyalty and gamification platform.
Optimove is incorporated as Mobius Solutions Ltd. and is headquartered in Tel Aviv. The company has faced regulatory scrutiny in Europe: in December 2025, France’s CNIL fined Optimove 1 million euros for GDPR processor violationsrelated to a data breach involving Deezer that exposed 9.8 million French users’ personal data.
The Mother’s Day 2026 report was released today via a press release distributed to media including PPC Land. The survey was conducted in April 2026 across 648 U.S. adults aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more.
Who: Optimove Insights, the research arm of marketing technology company Optimove, which serves over 500 brands globally. The survey respondents were 648 U.S. consumers aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more.
What: The 2026 Mother’s Day Shopping Report, a consumer survey covering gift category preferences, AI tool use in the purchase journey, the role of quality, price, and personalization in decision-making, purchase timing behavior, channel use, and payment method preferences. Key findings include: 49% of respondents regularly use AI tools for gift recommendations; flowers (63%), jewelry (59%), and clothing or accessories (55%) are the most popular gift categories; 61% of purchases happen one month to two weeks before Mother’s Day; 80% would buy earlier if a sale appeared; 47% plan to shop both online and in person; and 97% prefer non-cash payment methods.
When: The survey was conducted in April 2026 and the report was published April 23, 2026. Mother’s Day 2026 falls in May.
Where: The survey covered U.S. consumers only. Optimove is headquartered in Tel Aviv and operates in London and New York.
Why: The report matters for the marketing community because it documents measurable AI adoption in consumer gift discovery, identifies a pre-purchase timing window that peaks well before the occasion itself, and shows that relevance and personalization outperform generic discounts as message triggers. These findings have practical implications for seasonal campaign planning, budget allocation timing, personalization investment, and omnichannel measurement strategies.
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