How Agentic AI is Revolutionizing the Retail Experience

By Samuel Cane
VP of Experience

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The pressure is real: retail brands are being told the agentic era is here, and those who hesitate or are slow to adopt will be left behind. But in reality, it’s far less straightforward. 

Yes, AI agents are handling more of the customer journey, specifically recommendations, returns, and personalization efforts. Yet adoption isn't uniform.

For most brands, the opportunity feels more like a trap. You're buried under a pile of disjointed tech, fielding endless vendor pitches, and trying to figure out what's real versus what's hype. You know staying still isn't an option. But it’s hard to find solid ground.

That paralysis makes sense. For the past two years, the AI conversation in retail has been stuck in efficiency mode: smarter chatbots, faster automation, and leaner ops. Useful, yes. Transformative? No. Those tools optimized the old model. They didn't reimagine it.

Agentic AI does something different. Yes it assists your customers, but it also acts on their behalf, anticipates their needs, and closes the gap between intent and purchase without friction. That's the important shift.

From Chatbots to True Orchestration

Agentic orchestration sounds technical. But to a customer, it feels entirely different: they finally feel recognized.

Retail has always aspired to this. Think about your favorite local store. They know your name. They remember what you bought last week. They understand your style. You never have to explain yourself when you walk through the door. That is the gold standard of retail.

Historically, it was nearly impossible to deliver that level of personal service at scale. Agentic AI changes the math.

We know customers constantly move between social media, emails, websites, and physical stores. Typically, every one of those interactions triggers a reset. It creates a new session, a new journey, and forces the customer to explain what they want all over again.

Agentic orchestration stops the reset.

Information carries forward. Conversations continue smoothly from one touchpoint to the next. Context builds over time. The entire shopping experience feels like one continuous story rather than a string of disconnected moments. And customers value that consistency. 

Conversations Over Channels

Retailers spend a lot of time talking about omnichannel and unified commerce. Those terms reflect internal business structures. They do not reflect the customer's reality because customers don’t think in channels. They think in conversations.

A marketing email turns into a specific question. A store visit turns into online research. A quick text message turns into a purchase.

Agentic AI maintains that two-way conversation everywhere. The future of retail is less about managing channels and more about omnipresence. You simply show up with the right answer exactly when the customer needs it.

Current digital experiences try to do everything at once. Discovery, purchase, and support all sit crammed into the same environment, even though customers rarely need all of that at the same time.

The next evolution of experience design focuses strictly on intent. If a customer is researching, the interface educates them. If they are ready to buy, the interface removes friction. Agentic AI adapts the environment to match the exact need in that exact moment.

The result is a quieter, highly relevant, and highly efficient experience.

The Adoption Numbers

While consumers have embraced AI as their go-to research companion, they're not yet handing over their credit cards. According to Forrester, four in five consumers now use answer engines like ChatGPT to research products, yet when it comes to actually completing a purchase inside those same engines, that number drops to just two in five. 

Consumer adoption of answer engines for shopping (meaning browsing, not purchasing) is still relatively low and growing unevenly. The gap between discovery and transaction is real, and it shifts further depending on who you're talking to. Adoption of answer engines for product search climbs from 23% among Gen X to 32% among Millennials and 35% among Gen Z. But for Gen Z specifically: social channels actually outpace ChatGPT as a product discovery tool for that cohort - a reminder that "AI-powered discovery" doesn't always mean a chatbot. 

In practice, where agentic commerce plays out depends heavily on the environment. In owned environments - a brand's own app or website - the commerce transaction flow remains familiar: add to cart, proceed to checkout, purchase complete.

In non-owned environments like answer engines or social channels, it's more complicated: answer engines can pull products from some of the largest marketplaces and platforms, but most often they refer shoppers back to merchant sites to complete the purchase, with only very few offering native or in-app checkout. 

Relevance here is also deeply context-dependent: shaped by brand loyalty, how commoditized the product is, how much consideration the purchase requires, and available margins. That's why agentic commerce is gaining far more traction in B2B than in fashion retail. In 2025, 61% of B2B purchase influencers said their organization has or will use a private GenAI engine to support purchasing because procuring industrial parts or software licenses is a research-heavy, low-emotion decision where an agent adds clear value. Buying a Hermès bag is not. 

The emotional, tactile, and brand-identity dimensions of luxury fashion make agentic commerce largely irrelevant there - at least for now.