Artificial intelligence has firmly arrived across the retail sector in the DACH region, yet businesses continue to struggle with structural maturity gaps. This is the central finding of the study 'KI-Integration im Handel 2026' published by the EHI Retail Institute and authored by Imke Hahn as part of the Initiative KI im Handel. According to the research, 89.6 percent of surveyed retail companies currently deploy AI within their business operations. However, only 35.2 percent assess their operational AI maturity as rather high, while 38.7 percent report a rather low level and 26.1 percent describe it as medium.
Despite these maturity deficits, practical deployments have become the norm across day-to-day operations. Merely 2.2 percent of the surveyed retail businesses maintain no productive AI use cases at all. Furthermore, the technology is already delivering measurable operational returns for the majority of organizations. A notable 57.0 percent of respondents confirm that AI makes a noticeable to substantial contribution toward increasing workforce productivity.
When examining operational business units, AI adoption is heavily concentrated in technology-focused and customer-facing domains. Retail IT departments lead adoption with 77.0 percent utilizing artificial intelligence solutions. Marketing divisions follow closely behind at 76.3 percent, while e-commerce operations report a deployment rate of 56.1 percent. In these segments, AI tools are primarily applied to streamline workflows, optimize campaigns, and manage digital interactions with consumers.
Scaling these tools beyond isolated departmental initiatives remains a formidable technical challenge. According to the EHI findings, 75.3 percent of retailers identify entrenched legacy systems as the single largest roadblock to expansion. In addition, 73.1 percent point to disconnected data silos that prevent the seamless flow of information across business divisions. Deficient data quality represents another critical obstacle, cited by 72.4 percent of participants as a major barrier to leveraging advanced algorithmic models.
In contrast, retailers report notable progress regarding legal compliance and governance requirements. The survey indicates that 57.3 percent of companies consider the obligations of the European EU AI Act to be largely or fully implemented across their operations. While compliance frameworks are taking root in more than half of retail organizations, realizing sustained economic value will depend primarily on overhauling foundational database architectures.