Before The Aisle, Comes The Answer, By Platformance’s Wade Eagar

The UAE has moved beyond the AI adoption story. Back to school may show what changes when AI becomes part of everyday choice.

Last year, we described back to school as the region’s return to rhythm. We argued that brands should look beyond discounts and focus on convenience, quality and relevance. Twelve months later, I find myself coming back to much the same thought.

The principles have held. The behaviour around them has moved quickly.

In the first half of 2025, Microsoft estimated that 59.4% of the UAE’s working age population used generative AI. By the first quarter of 2026, that figure had reached 70.1%. During that time, global adoption moved from 15.1% to 17.8%. The UAE was already well ahead. Since then, the gap has widened.

Separate official data from Saudi Arabia points in the same direction. The Communications, Space and Technology Commission found that AI tool use more than doubled from 21.5% in 2024 to 45.2% in 2025. Of those users, 80.8% now use AI for information search.

The speed of that change is what matters. It moves the story beyond adoption and into behaviour. What do people do differently once the tool becomes familiar?

The Gulf is giving us an early view. Many markets are still discussing AI shaped consumer behaviour as a future possibility. Here, marketers can start observing which parts of discovery and choice are genuinely changing, and which are proving rather more stubborn.

Back to school is a good place to watch. For a growing number of parents, the school list may now begin with a question to an AI model: "build me a complete Year 4 list within this budget, compare the uniform options and tell me which retailer can deliver everything this week."

Search, social, retail sites and stores still matter. AI sits among them. The difference is that it can do some of the comparing, narrowing and rejecting before the parent sees the options.

In my experience, new channels rarely replace old behaviour in one clean move. People add them. They search, ask friends, browse marketplaces, walk through stores and now consult AI, sometimes during the same purchase. It is untidy, as shopping usually is. Marketing has to work across the whole decision.

The reason is practical. Back to school compresses a long list of connected choices into a short window, often within a fixed budget. If AI helps a parent compare retailers, check availability and assemble the basket before reaching a store or retail site, it has already influenced the purchase.

This is where the argument from last year gets stronger. A discount can help a parent stay within budget, but the relationship is built through what happens around it. Did the retailer save last year’s basket? Was the uniform in stock? Could the parent reorder in under a minute? Did the bundle remove four decisions, or simply reduce the price of one item?

Those details mattered before AI became familiar. They matter even more when an assistant can compare them.

For marketers, this is still a question of availability. Brands need to be remembered and easy to buy. Their pricing, stock, reviews and product information now also need to be clear enough for an AI assistant to understand. That sounds like a new technical requirement. In practice, it is another reason to do the existing work properly.

AI may help assemble the shortlist, but it cannot make an unavailable uniform appear, turn poor reviews into trust or make a confusing bundle useful. The reasons one brand gets chosen over another remain recognisable: familiarity, ease, credibility and a fair price.

The temptation is to turn the new surroundings into a new marketing playbook. I do not think we need one. The fundamentals have survived every previous change in how people discover and buy. What changes is where they need to show up.

Last year, the question was whether a brand made a parent’s life easier during the most compressed shopping moment of the year. It is still the right question. We may simply need to ask it before the parent reaches the aisle.

I suspect families return during the school year to the brands that helped them think less in August. If the experience was good enough, next year’s search, wherever it starts, may be very short.