Agentic commerce is here. Are you ready for AI that shops for your customers?

It’s time to take agentic commerce seriously

Because this kind of impact is already a reality:

Remember how online shopping reshaped retail over the past two decades? We’re on the brink of another shift. Quietly but quickly, the familiar mix of search bars, filters, and shopping carts is starting to feel dated.

Intelligent, autonomous agents are stepping in to change how customers discover, choose, and buy products. Acting on behalf of the customer, these agents bring a more intuitive kind of personalization driven by autonomy, intent, and contextual awareness. Whether it’s finding the right item, comparing options, checking stock, or handling post-purchase follow-up, they’re part of the entire experience. And the more they perceive, reason, act, and learn, the smarter they become.

Download our latest white paper on agentic commerce for retail to explore:

• How agentic commerce works, how it moves beyond reactive search, and the path from agent-assisted to fully autonomous shopping experiences.
• The technologies behind it, like Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) and Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, and how they support personalized journeys for different types of shoppers.
• The broader impact on retail operations, along with key risks around data, security, and integration that online retailers need to prepare for.

Autonomous agent-driven customer shopping experiences

The ‘shopper’ or ‘digital customer’ agent represents the human customer and interacts with specialized ‘remote service’ agents, giving instructions, requesting information, or initiating actions. These agents operate collaboratively across the customer journey and beyond, interacting not only with each other but also with digital twins of both consumers and products. 

Consumer digital twins enable agents to deliver hyper-personalized, predictive journeys. Product digital twins allow for context-rich interactions, creating new forms of value and differentiation.

These agents engage in ongoing, context-aware conversations, adjusting pricing, inventory allocation, promotions, and service levels in real time. This turns agentic commerce from a simple transactional process into a smart, responsive marketplace, where agents are constantly negotiating and coordinating on behalf of buyers and sellers. Here’s how the shopping experience plays out:

• Awareness: The process begins with a user setting a high-level goal for the AI agent, specifying budget and other preferences. The AI agent also determines the goal and its defined role as a shopping assistant. It then devises a plan to achieve the goal.
• Data analysis and comparison: At this stage of product discovery, the agent analyzes the collected data, parsing information like pricing, product reviews, and technical specifications.
• Decision making and selection: The agent narrows down the options. It leverages past results and feedback from customer data, including previous searches or user preferences, to refine its choice.
• Purchase and transaction: The agent initiates the transaction, interacting with the e-commerce platform and payment system.
• Post-purchase: After the purchase is complete, the agent informs the user that the transaction is complete, tracks the shipping status, and follows up with a review request.
• Adaptation & learning: Throughout the process, the AI agent applies a perceive–reason–act–learn cycle.
  

Benefits of agentic commerce for diverse retail shoppers

Research suggests that AI agents will have a significant impact on digital commerce, with a 30% increase in cart conversions, a 50% reduction in customer support costs, and 40% faster order fulfillment. But its real strength lies in how well it adapts to the needs of specific customer types:

• Window shoppers see trending products tailored to their style, based on what similar users explore. Agents highlight designs, colors, and ideas; no search bar needed.
• Deal seekers get real-time price comparisons across brands. Agents track promos, apply loyalty points automatically, and flag better-value bundles.
• Impulse buyers tap “buy now” with zero hassle. AR previews, face ID, and instant checkout make it quick and satisfying.
• Product researchers get side-by-side specs, filtered reviews, and user manuals delivered through a simple chat, not 12 open tabs.
• Brand loyalists are offered early access to limited drops, curated collections, and VIP invites, all based on purchase history.
• One-time customers are re-engaged with smart reminders, like a matching item that’s back in stock.
• Mobile shoppers get voice search, local inventory, and Apple Pay checkout in seconds.
• Global customers see familiar languages, taxes included, and shipping options that actually work where they live.

Vendors and solution providers are rapidly developing an array of agentic commerce capabilities retailers can immediately take advantage of and realize benefits from. Key players include Google, Amazon, Perplexity, and more.

Agentic AI drives innovations and efficiencies in e-commerce back offices

Across retail back-office functions, AI agents are stepping in to streamline various tasks. In marketing, agents analyze behavior and preferences to build targeted campaigns and test variations at scale. In IT for developer productivity, they monitor for anomalies, manage system health, and automate backups, reducing downtime and manual effort. Operations teams use agents to anticipate demand shifts and adjust inventory, factoring in variables like seasonality, location, and external trends.

Customer service teams gain efficiency as agents handle routine inquiries, escalate complex issues, and respond in multiple languages. In sales, agents enable real-time pricing adjustments based on shopper behavior and market signals. Finance uses agents for regulatory compliance, and to detect suspicious transactions by evaluating payment patterns and device context. Meanwhile, product and UX teams benefit from agents that refine layouts, recommendations, and content based on live engagement data. The result is a more responsive, intelligent back office that improves outcomes without adding complexity.

Enabling agentic commerce with protocols and workflows

To support this growing ecosystem of intelligent agents, robust communication standards are critical. Just as APIs unlocked service-level integration in modern commerce, agent-level interoperability now demands a new set of protocols.

One of the leading efforts in this direction is Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A), an open protocol designed to facilitate secure and seamless collaboration across agents. A2A complements Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), which helps provide shared tools and memory structures to guide agent behavior and decision-making.

These frameworks allow a “client” agent to delegate a task to a “remote” agent, enabling cooperative execution across domains, from inventory lookups and pricing adjustments to personalized recommendations and styling.

How A2A powers conversational shopping

Imagine a fashion retailer offering a personalized, chat-driven shopping experience. A customer interacts with a conversational agent to find the perfect outfit. That agent, in turn, communicates with other agents responsible for inventory, past purchases, and seasonal style trends. Together, they surface relevant options, suggest complementary pieces, and finalize the purchase, without the customer ever needing to filter, sort, or click through dozens of pages.

Challenges and risks in adopting agentic commerce

As with any major shift, agentic commerce comes with challenges that need to be addressed head-on. However, in this space, the challenges are very real and need careful attention. Some of these have been outlined below, along with mitigators to circumvent the challenge or risk. Get the white paper for a more detailed overview.

Will your brand lead or lag in the shift to agentic commerce?

The simple answer is that if you adopt agentic commerce now, you will lead. Hesitate and you’ll lag. Agentic commerce is an architectural transformation that will redefine how customers and retailers interact, transact, and create value. What matters now is how retailers respond. The next few years will separate the fast movers from the ones left catching up, starting with laying the right foundations and adopting emerging protocols, then advancing toward intelligent digital twins and retailer-owned agents, and eventually enabling fully autonomous agent ecosystems that reshape business models, collaboration, and control.

Get the full story.

Download the whitepaper to explore how agentic commerce can boost revenue and realize cost efficiencies to help your organization lead in the era of agentic commerce.