- India Leads Asia in LLM Search Adoption: LLM search now features in 22% of purchase journeys in India, nearly four times Japan’s 5%. In India, it is also closing in on social media, which leads discovery at 29%, signalling its rapid emergence as a key purchase touchpoint for marketers.
- Despite varying levels of reach of LLM search across markets, once consumers use LLM search, it shapes their final brand choice in 52%–68% of LLM-assisted journeys across markets, with India among the highest at 65%.
LLM search has become one of the fastest-emerging touchpoints in how Indian consumers discover brands, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Future of Influence: AI Is Rewriting the Rules of the Consumer Journey in Asia.
Across the four markets, LLM search has already become among the region’s top five touchpoints by reach, ahead of TV and radio, print, and billboards. India leads the region on this front. LLM search now reaches 22% of purchase journeys in India, the highest rate among the four Asian markets studied, India, China, Japan, and South Korea, and nearly four times Japan’s 5%. It has already become one of India’s top three touchpoints by reach, trailing only social media and online ads.
“Reach for LLM search isn’t one story across Asia, it’s a market-by-market story,” said Parul Bajaj, India Leader, Marketing, Sales and Pricing at BCG and report coauthor. “India sits at one end of that range, with LLM search already part of nearly a quarter of purchase journeys, nearly four times Japan’s rate. That difference comes down to infrastructure: which platforms consumers already rely on in a given market, and how tightly social media and e-commerce are already interwoven there. Brands can’t assume LLM search will arrive on the same timeline everywhere, where you need to show up, and how quickly, depends entirely on the market you’re in, and India shows just how far along that shift can already be.”
The bigger story is what happens once consumers use it. Across the four markets, LLM search shapes final brand choice for 52% to 68% of the consumers who turn to it. India sits near the top at 65%, the only market in the study where LLM search actually outranks social media, at 64%, as the most influential touchpoint among the consumers who use it.
Social media continues to command the widest reach in India, at 29% of purchase journeys, compared with 22% for LLM search, a 7-point advantage. That advantage narrows considerably when the lens shifts from reach to influence: among consumers who use each channel, LLM search and social media perform almost identically, at 65% and 64% respectively. For marketers, the message is clear: LLM search may not yet match social media’s reach, but it already rivals its influence. As adoption grows, brands will need to think about visibility not just in social feeds, but increasingly in AI-generated answers and recommendations.
“What’s striking across the markets we studied is how consistently influence holds up even where reach is still catching up,” said Kanika Sanghi, Partner & Director, BCG. “Once consumers actually use LLM search, it shapes their final brand choice at a similarly high rate almost everywhere we looked, a tight 52% to 68% band across every market we studied, regardless of how far along that market is on adoption. That consistency is the real signal. Consumers trust LLMs because they don’t just list options, they synthesize information, weigh alternatives against each other, and arrive at a recommendation with a clear, visible rationale attached. That’s a fundamentally different experience from scrolling through search results or ads, and it’s why trust builds so quickly once someone actually tries it.”
More than half of LLM-assisted purchase journeys led consumers to consider brands they would not otherwise have found, widening the opportunity for brands with lower visibility through traditional touchpoints. The report also finds that consumers describe AI-generated answers as helping remove the guesswork of navigating sponsored advertising and as providing personalized, objective, and transparent recommendations that can build confidence in their final decisions.
In India, the report points to a related shift already under way. The country’s growing creator economy, combined with deeper links between leading social platforms and e-commerce players, is bringing content, influence, and conversion closer together by enabling consumers to move more directly from product discovery toward purchase. This mirrors a more developed model in China, where social platforms have evolved beyond discovery to integrate commerce more directly into the consumer journey.
The findings draw on BCG’s Center for Customer Insight Global Consumer Radar survey of consumers across 14 markets worldwide. This report analyzes insights from almost 5,500 consumers across China, India, Japan, and South Korea, with participants demographically balanced by age, income, gender, and region. The research covers consumer behavior across 16 product and service categories.
