As machine-driven decisions reshape purchasing patterns, businesses must master both computational precision and authentic human connection to earn lasting consumer commitment.
Great agentic AI should feel invisible. When it works beautifully, you don't notice it. The right content appears before you need it, clutter vanishes, and the experience feels uniquely yours. This seamless, intuitive understanding is the hallmark of truly intelligent experiences, and it fundamentally reshapes how brand loyalty operates in 2025, and beyond.
As AI agents increasingly influence – and sometimes make – consumer choices, will it precipitate the end of emotional brand connections? After all, what place do feelings have in a world of rational machines selecting products based on specifications and price?
This view, however, fundamentally misunderstands both AI and human nature. In reality, we're stepping into a world where art and science meet and blend together, as ever. Decision-making will always involve rational and emotional elements, requiring partners who can handle that duality.
According to Cognizant's New Minds, New Markets report, AI-friendly consumers will drive up to 55% of all consumer purchasing activity by the start of the next decade. Yet, there's a fascinating contradiction in how consumers engage with AI. During product discovery, consumers show relative comfort with AI assistance (with a Comfort Quotient of 47), but this plummets to just 27 when making actual purchases.
This tension reflects a fundamental truth: human irrationality remains central to decision-making even in an AI-driven world. The machines that serve us are built by humans and designed to satisfy human needs, including our emotional and status-driven ones.
Trust signals for humans and machines
The assumption that AI agents will operate on purely rational criteria misses the reality that these systems serve humans with complex motivations. When you receive search engine results, you don't just see what's rationally most suited to your needs; also served up are items that might appeal to you as a user and what you wish to receive.
This insight is crucial for brands navigating the agentic AI era. The rational attributes of products and services remain essential, but they've always been just one factor in consumer decisions. The intangible elements that create emotional resonance will continue to matter tremendously.
Cognizant’s New Work, New World report reveals that generative AI could deliver over $1 trillion in annual growth to the US economy by 2032. Achieving this forecast requires widespread adoption and limited disruption, both fundamentally dependent on trust, though. For brands, this means nurturing trust in the technology and the overall experience they deliver.
As the adoption of generative AI accelerates, with Cognizant research predicting business implementation could grow from 13% to 46% within the next decade, brands face a vital challenge: building trust signals that resonate with AI systems and human consumers.
According to Cognizant's observations, the foundations remain surprisingly consistent. In every other domain, from search and AI onwards, Cognizant research shows that the core elements of business success remain critical: having a good product, delivering it properly to customers, marketing it effectively, generating positive reviews, building advocacy, and driving loyalty. Cognizant's analysis indicates that all these factors significantly influence recommendation systems.
From Cognizant’s perspective, when AI agents evaluate options on consumers' behalf, they'll inevitably be trained to value positive customer experiences, quality, and consistent delivery of brand promises. The data that feeds these evaluations comes from human sentiment, reviews, and engagement patterns. Ultimately, you must have quality content or products; they must be good, usable, and deliver a positive experience.
“Thanks to AI now people can ask questions in ways that we had never seen before, including visual search with images and videos and more complex questions. The ability to work with these more complicated search scenarios means that it can adapt to exactly what the customer needs and also to the way they are using to find what they need, making not only more accurate but also more personalised to each person's preferences when searching.” Google Cloud
The reinforcing cycle of AI-driven loyalty
One fascinating aspect of brand loyalty in the agentic age is how it may create even stronger monopolistic tendencies than we see today. Once a brand performs well within AI recommendation systems, it creates a reinforcing feedback loop.
According to Cognizant's analysis, this dynamic leads to dominant performers in the space because they receive positive feedback once they excel. Customers appreciate this, creating loyalty, and AI agents continue serving these options, reinforcing the results. From Cognizant's perspective, this resembles search engine rankings: breaking through becomes increasingly difficult if you're not near the top because the leaders are so powerful. But for those who achieve prominence, they'll be recommended again and again.
Cognizant research suggests that brands that quickly establish themselves as trusted options within AI ecosystems may enjoy unprecedented loyalty. At the same time, our findings indicate that those who lag could find themselves permanently disadvantaged, regardless of the quality improvements they make later.
In a separate finding, Cognizant's New Minds, New Markets research shows that 90% of jobs could experience some degree of disruption from generative AI, including marketing and brand management roles. If this comes to bear, it will transform how brands communicate their value propositions, with authenticity becoming more crucial.
Loyalty cannot be hacked because it stems from meaningful contact with a product or service that fulfils needs in ways that create both emotional and logical attachments. This truism underscores the danger of attempting to "hack" the system through artificial means. Optimisation tactics might make short-term gains in visibility possible, but sustainable brand loyalty will continue to depend on authentic experiences that genuinely meet customer needs.
“We are seeing a huge transformation in what customers experience when they interact with a company’s services in different industries: for instance in retail, search experience is becoming so much more personalized, adapting to the customer’s needs and preferences and giving personalized views which can help a customer feel more confident when purchasing an article online. Cross-industry we can already see the impact that conversational agents is having: faster 24x7 assistance for customers, in their own native language, and using the customer’s context to provide meaningful answers and useful information.” Google Cloud
Three priorities for brand leaders
As AI agents become more prevalent, brand leaders should focus on three critical areas:
- Deliver on core promises consistently: The foundation of trust remains unchanged. Focusing on good products, customer service, and CX, investing in core values, and expressing those externally remains paramount. Notably, Cognizant research shows that "exposure scores" for marketing managers have already reached 17% – meaning they are vulnerable to displacement – as generative AI helps execute tasks such as content generation and market analysis.
- Build for transparency: AI systems and their decision-making processes can sometimes seem opaque, which creates anxiety. Brands that can show why AI agents recommend them will earn trust from consumers seeking reassurance. This includes transparent data usage practices, clear values articulation, and demonstrable proof points of quality and service.
- Create dual-track engagement strategies: Engage directly with consumers while also optimising for AI agent evaluation. Businesses must determine how they'll participate in this new ecosystem, including whether to develop their own branded agentic experiences.
“There are many factors which have a direct impact on brand integrity and for which it is crucial to have mitigation strategies in place. These are for example data leakage (e.g. exposure of unwanted information, spread of misinformation), hallucinations, prompt injection, jailbreaking, sensitive topics or even the tone of voice used by the LLM which could undermine brand identity.” Google Cloud
The rise of agentic AI represents a clarifying moment for brand leaders. Successful brands will understand that emotional connections remain vital in an increasingly algorithmic marketplace. Perception of value, status signalling, and community belonging continue to drive consumer choices, even when filtered through AI interfaces.
Cognizant Moment excels in this environment through its unique approach to intelligent ecosystem orchestration. Unlike traditional service providers that fragment CX across numerous teams with different priorities and technology stacks, Moment integrates research, strategy, design, product, and marketing capabilities under one organisation. This eliminates the silos that typically separate these functions, enabling unparalleled collaboration in developing AI-enabled experiences.
Its ability to connect experiences and their underlying data, technology, and operations across the enterprise sets Moment apart. Having this comprehensive view allows us to break through the fragmentation that prevents most organisations from delivering seamless experiences.
Cognizant's scale, deep technical knowledge, and experience enable clients to leverage generative AI alongside human creativity to create dynamic, hyper-personalised experiences that continuously adapt to individual needs. This approach moves beyond simply addressing functional requirements to creating experiences that feel intuitive and emotionally resonant.
“Generative AI opens a world of possibilities to what customer experience will look like in the near future - from personalized experiences which we are already seeing today in many industries, to even completely new ways of interaction between our customers and our company.” Google Cloud
The emerging landscape presents unprecedented opportunities for brands that understand this fundamental truth: even in a world of rational agents, humans remain delightfully, powerfully irrational.
Ready to build brand loyalty that resonates with both AI systems and human emotions? Contact us to discover how Cognizant Moment can help your organisation thrive in the agentic age.
