Key insights

  • Electronics, tech and gaming dominate holiday AI searches at 31% of prompts.
  • Online shopping preferences outnumber in-store by 18-to-1.
  • Research and comparison make up 68.2% of all holiday prompts.
  • Quality/performance (24.4%) and convenience (14.7%) drive decisions more than price (13.2%).
  • Shopping urgency peaks on December 22–23.
  • Amazon holds 9.1% retailer share of voice, more than double any competitor.

Build the product pages AI recommends

Answer engines pick product offers based on what the product detail page gives them. Comparing the offers engines place first against those they bury shows what matters:

How much more likely a top-ranked offer is to have each feature
  • "Best Price" tag+777%
  • FAQ section+188%
  • Product video+106%
  • Customer Q&A+60%
  • Customer reviews+35%
  • Multiple images+30%

Prioritize product categories with the most demand

Electronics, tech and gaming accounts for 31% of prompts, led by PC components (2.1%), smartphones (1.5%) and laptops (1.1%). Travel is 6.9% of prompts, mostly flights (6%) and hotels (4.3%). Health, personal care and fitness is 6.4%, concentrated in skincare and supplements.

Holiday prompts by category
  • Electronics, tech & gaming31%
  • Travel6.9%
  • Health, personal care & fitness6.4%
  • · PC components2.1%
  • · Smartphones1.5%
  • · Laptops1.1%

Create content that attracts browsers and buyers

General product research is 46.9% of prompts and product comparisons add 22%, so 68.9% of holiday activity is pre-purchase. Bottom-funnel prompts split between "where to buy" (6.1%) and price or deal checking (3.3%). Gift-idea prompts are only 1.2%. Post-purchase support captures 7.4%.

Query intent across holiday prompts
  • All prompts100%
Research 46.9%Comparison 22%Where to buy 6.1%Price / deals 3.3%Post-purchase 7.4%Gift ideas 1.2%Other

Optimize your presence on the channels shoppers prefer

Online shopping signals outnumber in-store signals 28.3% to 1.6%, while 69.2% of prompts state no channel preference. Among retailers, Amazon dominates with 9.1% share of voice, followed by Steam (3.9%) and Shopify (3.1%).

Retailer share of voice in holiday prompts
  • Amazon9.1%
  • Steam3.9%
  • Shopify3.1%
Channel preference
  • Online28.3%
  • In-store1.6%
  • Not stated69.2%

Focus on what drives holiday buying decisions

Quality and performance appears in 24.4% of prompts, convenience and speed in 14.7%, price and deals in 13.2%. Brand loyalty surfaces in only 1.9%. Among price-sensitive shoppers, budget-conscious (8.4%) is the largest segment, ahead of mid-range (5.5%) and premium-willing (5.3%).

24.4%Quality / performance
14.7%Convenience / speed
13.2%Price / deals
1.9%Brand loyalty

Prepare for Christmas week day by day

Dec 20–21 · Comparison window31.3%of weekly volume. Quality/performance peaks at 25.6%; product comparisons reach 11.9%.
Dec 22–23 · Deadline rush38.9%of weekly volume. Availability signals peak; convenience climbs to 10.3%.
Dec 24 · Final window15.4%of weekly volume. Product information requests peak at 36%.
Dec 25 · Still commercial14.4%of weekly volume. Electronics are 29.7% of prompts.

The retailer pre-Christmas action plan

  1. Measure your visibility against competitors in answer engines first; you cannot fix what you cannot see.
  2. Clean product feeds and PDPs: pricing, availability, images and titles.
  3. Build FAQs, Q&A and reviews on priority pages.
  4. Write comparison content for the 22% of prompts that compare.
  5. Fix inventory and delivery signals before the December 22–23 rush.
The AI shelf is stocked in October. Retailers who wait for December are competing for shelf space that has already been assigned.

Methodology

Analysis draws from Flowgen's Prompt Volumes tool, covering 200,000 commercial prompts from December 20–26, 2025. Prompts were classified with GPT-4o-mini using structured outputs across product category, query intent, decision driver, price sensitivity and channel preference. Product-page feature lifts compare top-ranked and bottom-ranked offers in ChatGPT Shopping.

Allen Wu & Kate UnderwoodResearch · Experience, Flowgen