AI is about to do more than recommend products.
It’s going to buy them. 🛒🤖
Bain & Company just published a sharp report on Agentic AI in retail, and the headline is simple:
Shopping is shifting from “search + browse” to “delegate + approve.”
And over time, checkout can move with it too. ⚡️
Here are a few data points that jumped out at me 👇
📊 30%–45% of US consumers already use GenAI for product research and comparison
🤝 About half still aren’t comfortable with fully autonomous purchases (yet)
💰 Bain forecasts $300B–$500B in US “agentic commerce” by 2030, up to 25% of e-commerce
🚨 The strategic risk for retailers is “Disintermediation”
If a third-party agent becomes the new front door, it can capture attention, decision-making leverage, and eventually the transaction.
That’s margin pressure, weaker differentiation, and less ownership of the customer relationship.
What retailers should do next (Bain’s playbook, simplified) 👇
🧱 Build a real moat
Exclusives, loyalty, bundles, and value-added services that an agent can’t easily replicate
📣 Rethink retail media
Discovery starts happening inside natural-language answers, not just onsite search pages
🔐 Protect data + checkout
So you don’t become a commodity fulfillment pipe
Our take (Alhena.ai) 🧭
The next storefront is your brand-owned AI agent.
Retailers have a window right now because shoppers trust retailer-owned on-site agents more than third-party agents. The winners will use this window to do three things:
🛍️ Make the on-site AI Shopping Agent genuinely helpful (not an FAQ bot)
🎯 Ensure accuracy across catalog, inventory, promos, and policy edge cases (accuracy becomes the brand, drives trust)
📈 Instrument the new “AI funnel” early: which prompts drive traffic, what journeys convert, where context gets lost
If you’re a retailer, one question to ask in every roadmap meeting in 2026:
Who owns the agent relationship: you, or someone else? 👀
#AgenticAI #Retail #eCommerce #AIShoppingAssistant