Bunnings Sells Through Google AI Mode

Bunnings, Australasia's largest home improvement retailer, will begin selling directly through Google AI Mode within a fortnight, per iTnews reporting on June 14, 2026. The integration enables customers to purchase Bunnings products from within Google's AI-powered search mode, adding an AI-native commerce channel to the retailer's existing digital touchpoints.

The Google AI Mode integration follows Bunnings' April 2026 showcase of Buddy, a Gemini Enterprise for CX-powered conversational shopping assistant, at Google Cloud Next 2026. As reported by Computer Weekly, Buddy replaced Bunnings' earlier Ask Bunnings AI chatbot and was built in just over six weeks. The multimodal assistant handles project-based queries - a customer can describe building an outdoor deck and Buddy recommends all required materials and links to how-to videos. It can also process uploaded photos of handwritten shopping lists or broken parts to identify and locate products at the nearest store. Bunnings managing director Mike Schneider said the roll-out was 'a practical example of the business evolving to meet changing customer behaviours,' per Computer Weekly.

The retail e-commerce market is moving away from traditional keyword search toward agentic commerce, where virtual agents understand context, identify complex needs, and act on behalf of the customer, per Computer Weekly's Belwadi Srikanth (Google Cloud). Wesfarmers has struck multi-year partnerships with both Google and Microsoft to embed AI across its Bunnings, Kmart, and Priceline businesses. The Google AI Mode channel represents a new class of AI-mediated retail touchpoint where purchase intent is captured inside a generative search experience rather than on the retailer's own site.

Adoption rates for AI-mode purchasing among Bunnings customers; whether Kmart and other Wesfarmers brands follow with similar integrations; and how Google AI Mode's commerce capabilities expand across other Australian retailers. Bunnings also plans to integrate customer loyalty data into Buddy for personalised recommendations, per Computer Weekly.