ChatGPT and Gemini pick the store before the product. What new grocery data means for CPG brands

Before a shopper asks an AI assistant which oat milk to buy, a lot of them ask where to buy it. That first answer names a store, and the store decides which shelf, which product page and which retailer's own assistant gets the next question. Most CPG brands track the product answer. Far fewer track the store answer.

EMARKETER just put numbers on it. Its AI Visibility Index for U.S. retail stores, published in a Q4 report on November 3 and summarized in articles on November 5 and November 9, shows which stores ChatGPT and Gemini recommend, and which publishers they lean on to decide. For grocery, the answer is not the list most brand teams would guess.

What did EMARKETER's AI Visibility Index measure?#

In September 2026, EMARKETER ran 11,250 ChatGPT and 11,250 Gemini recommendations across 23 retail store categories. The prompts were standardized questions like "best store to buy skincare products," varied by product type, need, audience and price tier, and checked against consumer search volume. The categories include several where CPG brands live: everyday essentials, groceries, beauty products, pet supplies, consumer health and baby gear.

The headline metric is brand mention rate, the share of each tool's recommendations that name a store. Combined figures weight ChatGPT and Gemini by EMARKETER's forecast of their 2026 U.S. monthly users (118.4 million and 89.6 million).

Across all 23 categories, Target led with a 31% mention rate in September, up from 29%, followed by Walmart at 23% and Amazon at 18%, per the November 5 article. Specialists owned their own aisles: Best Buy at 91% in electronics, The Home Depot at 89% in home improvement and Chewy at 85% in pet supplies. One caution: EMARKETER's November 9 piece gives different figures for the same month (Target 29%, Walmart 24%, Amazon 15%, Chewy 72%, and Ulta at 63% in beauty). We can't see which cut each uses, so read the rankings, not the decimals.

Which grocery stores do ChatGPT and Gemini recommend most?#

EMARKETER calls grocery a highly competitive category. No one came close to the 85% to 91% that Chewy and Best Buy posted in their categories.

Costco44%

Whole Foods Market43%

Walmart33%

Trader Joe's32%

Aldi29%

Source: EMARKETER AI Visibility Index, Retail Store Movers and Leaders (Nov 5, 2026)

Three things stand out. Aldi fell from 33% to 29% in a single month, which tells you these lists move. Whole Foods and Aldi had particularly strong No. 1 mention rates, meaning when they're named, they're often named first. And Target and Kroger gained ground, according to EMARKETER, though neither cracked the top five.

If your brand's grocery distribution is concentrated in conventional supermarkets, notice what is missing from that chart. Check how many of the five you sell through, and how your category shelf looks at each one.

Who decides which grocer gets named?#

This is the part brand teams can act on. EMARKETER looked at the sources each engine cited for grocery recommendations, and the two engines behave very differently.

Tasting Table (Gemini)17%

The Kitchn (Gemini)8%

Consumers' Checkbook (ChatGPT)8%

Kiplinger (ChatGPT)6%

Source: EMARKETER AI Visibility Index, Retail Store Movers and Leaders (Nov 5, 2026)

Gemini's grocery answers lean hard on two food publishers. Tasting Table showed up in 17% of its recommendations and The Kitchn in 8%. ChatGPT spread its sources out: Consumers' Checkbook led at 8%, Kiplinger followed at 6%, and the rest of its top 10 sat between 3% and 4%.

Across all retail categories, EMARKETER found ChatGPT relied more on third-party publishers, while Gemini favored retailer- and brand-owned websites. Between August and September, ChatGPT also mentioned fewer unique brands and cited fewer domains, while Gemini expanded both. So the engines are drifting in opposite directions, and one tracking number blended across both will hide that.

A Cision report released on November 9 points the same way from a different category. In AI answers to "best car" questions, Toyota led with a 13.8% share of brand mentions, yet its own website was a fraction of the cited sources, against more than 4,000 for YouTube. Cision also found a supplement example every CPG marketer should read twice: social posts about magnesium glycinate talked mostly about stress relief, while AI responses emphasized bone support and cardiometabolic support. The answer can name your product and still pitch it differently than your customers do.

Why should a CPG brand care which store AI names?#

Because the store answer routes the shopper into a system you don't control. Once someone lands at Walmart or Amazon, the retailer's own assistant picks the product. Tinuiti's survey of 1,000 U.S. holiday gift buyers (published November 5) found 57% plan to use AI tools for holiday shopping and 48% expect to use a retailer's own assistant.

Any AI tool57%

A retailer's own AI assistant48%

ChatGPT30%

Google Gemini28%

Source: Tinuiti, Holiday Shopping Statistics 2026 (survey of 1,000 U.S. holiday gift buyers, Nov 5, 2026)

Per EMARKETER's read of the same survey, roughly 1 in 3 gift buyers plan to use Amazon's Alexa for Shopping and about 1 in 4 plan to use Walmart's Sparky. We covered how those assistants choose products in our posts on Alexa for Shopping's text orders and Walmart's agents.

So there are two gates now. ChatGPT or Gemini picks the store. Then the store's assistant picks the product. A brand that wins the second gate at a retailer the first gate never names is winning a smaller race. Our view: map the store answer for your category before you spend another dollar on retailer content.

What should CPG brands do before Black Friday?#

Thanksgiving is November 26 and Cyber Five runs through November 30. Tinuiti found 25% of gift buyers plan to do most or all of their shopping in that window. There is time for a focused pass.

1. Run the store prompts yourself. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini "best store to buy [your category]" in a few variations (budget, organic, for a family, near me). Log which retailers they name and in what order, per engine.
2. Rank your retailer content work by that list. The stores AI names most for your category get your best product pages, reviews and images first.
3. Find the publishers behind your category answer. For grocery store answers on Gemini, that's Tasting Table and The Kitchn. Check which ones get cited in your category, then earn coverage there with real product news, not paid listicles.
4. Fix your own site for Gemini. Since Gemini favors retailer- and brand-owned sites, make sure your product pages and where-to-buy page are crawlable and name the retailers that actually carry each SKU.
5. Compare AI's framing to your customers'. Read what the answers say your product is for, then read your reviews. If they don't match, as in Cision's magnesium example, fix the claims on your pages first.
6. Re-check monthly. Aldi lost four points in a month. A one-time audit goes stale fast.

The product answer still matters, and our free SKU audit checks it for every product you sell across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google. The Searchpanel homepage explains how the score works, our glossary defines AI share of voice and AI citation, and if you want us to map the store answer for your category with you, book a demo.