• Retailers must upgrade back‑office and data systems to keep pace with AI‑driven consumer discovery. • Generative AI agents replace browser searches, enabling personalized product discovery and purchase. • Agentic commerce lets AI anticipate needs, negotiate deals, and execute transactions autonomously. • By 2030, U.S. B2C retail could generate up to $1 trillion from agentic commerce; global $3-5 trillion. • The shift blurs platform boundaries, creating seamless, intent‑driven shopping journeys. • Companies still focused on SEO risk disappearing from AI‑modelled product discovery.
Article Summaries:
- Retailers attending the National Retail Federation’s 2026 Big Show in New York were warned that the rapid consumer adoption of generative AI tools is reshaping shopping. The conference highlighted “agentic commerce” - AI agents that discover, compare, negotiate and purchase products on a shopper’s behalf - as a seismic shift that could generate up to $1 trillion in U.S. B2C revenue by 2030 and $3‑$5 trillion globally. McKinsey’s report and panelists stressed that brands still focused on search engines risk obsolescence. SAP responded with three key steps-machine‑readable product data, semantic summaries for LLMs, and problem‑based product tagging-plus new AI storefront and retail‑intelligence tools to help retailers adapt.
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