TrustRadius’s 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report reveals that while AI is standard in software purchasing, human validation through peer reviews remains crucial in decision-making. The report highlights the importance of fact-checking AI research as 94% of B2B buyers rely on it. This underscores the need for reliable human feedback even in an AI-driven market.
Sixty-three percent of B2B technology buyers used AI during their software purchase journey over the past year. Nearly all of them then went and verified what it told them. That tension sits at the center of TrustRadius‘s 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report, released July 15, 2026, which draws on responses from 1,862 technology buyers and 444 technology vendors surveyed globally in January 2026.
The report, now published under TrustRadius’s parent company HG Insights following its June 2025 acquisition, documents a clear behavioral split: AI is accelerating how buyers gather information, but the resources that actually move a purchase decision remain stubbornly human-centered. Product demos, free trials, firsthand experience, and peer reviews still rank as the most influential inputs when buyers narrow their options and commit to a vendor, according to the report.
AI speeds research; it does not replace judgment
The headline figure is stark. Of the 63% of buyers who used AI during their research, 94% fact-checked its responses at least some of the time, according to PR Newswire‘s release of the report findings. That near-universal verification rate means enterprise procurement and IT teams are treating AI output as a starting point, not a conclusion.
AI is accelerating research, not replacing critical evaluation. The tools that close deals are still the ones buyers can touch, test, or hear about from a peer.
Rajat Bhatnagar, SVP of Growth at HG, framed the dynamic plainly in the report’s announcement: buyers want the speed AI synthesis provides, but they also require the confidence that comes from verified sources. Those two demands, he noted, have to coexist. The data supports exactly that reading: 74% of buyers use reviews to inform their purchase decisions, a figure that holds even as AI adoption climbs, per Demand Gen Report‘s coverage of the study.
The finding has a direct implication for vendor teams evaluating their go-to-market mix. If AI tools are increasingly the first stop in a buyer’s research, but AI-generated recommendations are themselves shaped by third-party content such as customer reviews, independent publications, and peer experiences, then the quality and volume of authentic customer voice becomes a front-of-funnel asset, not just a late-stage validation tool.
Analyst reports collapse as peer content holds
One of the report’s sharpest data points concerns analyst reports. Only 13% of buyers used them in their most recent purchase decision, according to the PR Newswire release. That represents a 63% decrease since 2022, when TrustRadius began tracking the metric systematically. The decline suggests that as information has become more accessible through AI synthesis and peer networks, buyers are bypassing traditional analyst gatekeepers at a meaningful rate.
Analyst report usage by B2B buyers (% using to inform purchase decision)
The shortlist behavior documented in the report reinforces just how compressed the buying process has become. Eighty-three percent of buyers shortlisted three or fewer products, according to the report, meaning vendors that do not appear in early AI-driven discovery or in peer review ecosystems may never get evaluated at all. Getting into a short consideration set is increasingly a prerequisite for winning a deal, not just an advantage.
On the AI product side, 59% of all purchases in the survey involved AI tools or tools with AI features, per the PR Newswire release. Satisfaction is tracking well: 75% of buyers who purchased an AI tool said it has lived up to their expectations, a figure that matters for procurement teams assessing renewal risk and expansion candidates in their current portfolios.
Generative Engine Optimization emerges as a vendor priority
The report surfaces a term that enterprise marketing and demand generation teams will need to operationalize: Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. As buyers increasingly route their initial research through large language models rather than traditional search engines, the content that shapes those AI responses becomes the new battleground for vendor visibility, according to Demand Gen Report’s coverage of the findings.
The mechanism matters here. AI-generated recommendations are not constructed in a vacuum. They are trained on and influenced by the same trusted third-party content, including customer reviews, editorial coverage, and peer-shared experiences, that buyers have long used to verify vendor claims. That means a vendor’s credibility in AI-mediated discovery is largely a function of the authentic customer content it has already accumulated. GEO, in practice, is less a new discipline than a reframing of review strategy for a generative-first information environment.
As buyers route research through large language models, the customer reviews and peer content that shape AI outputs become front-of-funnel assets, not late-stage validation.
The pricing finding is a consistent thread across the annual series. Transparent pricing has been buyers’ top wish-list item for vendors for four consecutive years, every year since TrustRadius started asking in 2023, according to the PR Newswire release. For procurement and sourcing teams, that persistent gap between what buyers want to see upfront and what vendors choose to publish remains one of the most actionable disconnects in the data.
What this means for your team
- Audit your third-party review presence now: with 74% of buyers using reviews and AI recommendations shaped by that same content, review volume and recency directly affect your GEO visibility, not just late-stage conversion.
- Do not pull budget from demos and trials: buyers ranked them as top decision influences even as AI adoption climbed, meaning self-service evaluation assets remain high-ROI for enterprise sales cycles.
- Pressure-test your pricing transparency: buyers have flagged opaque pricing as their primary vendor complaint for four straight years. If your team is evaluating vendor shortlists, flag pricing clarity as a scoring criterion.
- Reassess analyst report weighting in your evaluation process: usage has dropped 63% since 2022, and your buyers may already be arriving at demos having bypassed traditional analyst guidance entirely.
