Retailgentic | Consumer Behavior & Retail Trend

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst

Retailgentic explores consumer behavior and retail trends to help brands and retailers innovate. Join Scot Wingo for expert insights, actionable news, and ecommerce innovation strategies to navigate the future of retail and agentic commerce.

  1. 4日前

    Caila Schwartz, Head of Agentic Commerce Salesforce is Back! Holiday 2026, State of Ecommerce, Plus... “The Caila Five”

    This week’s episode is a data deep dive… two of them, actually. Salesforce just dropped a back-to-back data release: the latest edition of its State of Commerce report and its Holiday 2026 predictions. Caila Schwartz, Salesforce’s newly minted Head of Agentic Commerce Shopper Insights, walks us through both. Think of it as a rearview mirror on the first half of 2026 and headlights into the holiday season, with agentic commerce showing up in nearly every number. Highlights: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟬% 𝗷𝘂𝗺𝗽: 15% of shoppers now start their buying journey with an LLM or agent, up from 5% last spring.𝗛𝗮𝗹𝗳 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀: About 50% have used a general-purpose LLM, social media agent, or branded agent somewhere in their buying journey in the past 12 months, a 67% increase over last year.𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴: Agentic search traffic converts at roughly 2.5–3.5%, about 2–3x overall conversion and far above social’s sub-1%.𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀: 74% of shoppers trust agent recommendations, and over 80% feel more confident in purchases made after interacting with a brand-owned agent like Rufus or Sparky.𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘁: Discovery is happening inside conversations that never send a click back to the brand site.𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗮 𝗙𝗶𝘃𝗲: Salesforce’s Holiday 2026 predictions: non-human traffic, branded agents everywhere, social commerce acceleration, the store’s new hybrid role, and the free-shipping squeeze.𝟮𝟬% 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰: This holiday, Salesforce predicts about one in five e-commerce visits will come from crawlers and agents, not people.𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲: About a third of B2C orgs have agents deployed today, over half plan to deploy within six months, and by Cyber Week one in three e-commerce sites will have a branded agent on site.𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝟵𝗫: Social commerce is predicted to grow nine times faster than traditional e-commerce this year, and it’s high-income shoppers, even more than Gen Z, saying they’ll buy in-app this holiday.𝗛𝘆𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆: 37% of holiday dollars will be “hybrid sales” that rely on both digital and physical to close the deal, 80% of shoppers use their phone while standing in your store.𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗸: Four in five commerce pros say their tech stack grew over the last two years, making data unification the #1 barrier to good agents.Caila brings the receipts, real numbers on a shift most of us are still trying to eyeball. We’ll get her back in the fall when the actual holiday forecast drops. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 06:30 Interview begins, Caila's new title07:20 Caila's role and 12 years at Salesforce08:30 Two reports: State of Commerce + Holiday predictions09:30 State of Commerce methodology12:50 What's new in this edition14:45 The agentic discovery shift: 50%, 200%, 15%17:25 Who's losing share in discovery19:00 Faster than mobile or social ever moved22:20 The measurability problem25:20 Conversion: 2–3x better than average27:10 Why shoppers lean on agents, by income29:30 Trust: 74% and the 80% confidence stat32:00 The branded-agent race34:30 The #1 barrier: data unification40:20 Caila Five #1: 20% non-human traffic42:30 #2: One in three sites get a branded agent43:15 #3: Social commerce grows 9x44:25 #4: The store's new role 37% hybrid sales46:20 #5: Free shipping and the K-shaped economy47:30 Decoupled transactions deep dive53:10 Top recos: unify data, turn on ACP 👉 Connect with Caila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caila-schwartz/👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/👉 Check out the State of Ecommerce: https://www.salesforce.com/commerce/resources/state-of-commerce/👉 Look at the Holiday 2026 Predictions: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/holiday-retail-predictions-2026/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    Caila Schwartz, Head of Agentic Commerce Salesforce is Back! Holiday 2026, State of Ecommerce, Plus... “The Caila Five”

  2. 8月20日

    700 Stores, 10 Million Shoppers, $3M Raised: Cooklist CEO & Co-Founder Daniel Vitiello

    This one is a build deep dive. Daniel has spent eight years on the same problem, and the answer has changed shape three times along the way: a consumer app in 2018, a shoppable recipe platform in 2023, and now a conversational shopping assistant running inside grocers’ own sites.  We go deep on the plumbing here: product catalogs, ontologies, eval systems, model selection, retail media, and what an agent does when a shopper types “taco night.” If you like knowing how these things actually work under the hood, this is your episode. Never miss the latest Retailgentic news→ Highlights: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀: Live in over 700 stores, reaching over 10 million shoppers, with the number of locations set to double before the end of the year. The consumer app has over a million users. 𝟰𝟭 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲: A one-line JavaScript install that reuses the retailer’s existing catalog, add-to-cart, analytics, and retail media. National scale in six weeks.𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 → 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁: Daniel’s framing for the whole shift. The old era: you search one thing, you select it. The new one: the agent assembles a solution and you approve it. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺: Thousands of test scenarios with grading criteria aligned to each retailer’s merchandising principles, run tens or hundreds of times to get a distribution of responses. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲: Retailers write procedures the agent pulls when a scenario matches. One of Daniel’s favorites: if you’re cooking fish today or tomorrow, it recommends fresh. If it’s later in the week, frozen.𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗲: Onboarding is essentially an interview with the business. What are your values? How do you respond? What are your merchandising principles? That becomes the agent’s identity and personality. 𝟭,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘀: Instead of one holiday carousel every shopper sees, merchant teams define ~20 axes — price, dietary needs, brand preference — and an agentic process generates permutations personalized against transaction history.𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗳𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗧𝗶𝗸𝗧𝗼𝗸: Long before ChatGPT, Cooklist ran a TikTok series generating recipes with GPT-2 and early GPT-3. The models got good at basic recipes so fast that the fun moved to challenging them to be creative.Daniel is one of those founders who has clearly built the thing himself, and it shows in the answers. We learned about a thousand things from this one. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps:02:57 Welcome Daniel Vitiello, CEO & co-founder of Cooklist03:10 Grocery, CPG, and retailer-hosted agents: the pod's favorite topics04:46 The $1 check and the handwritten letter for loyalty data05:46 Why 2017 was the moment06:12 Inside the Cooklist app: home inventory and the AI chef07:35 AI as the thread: Kurzweil, GPT-2, and the AI Chefs TikTok series09:37 B2C to B2B, and the synergies of running both12:05 The cat food problem13:34 The core identity system: hummus, three ways15:58 Search and select vs. review and accept16:23 The spark for B2B: Target, Techstars, and saying no18:45 Recipe commerce and meal-pairing merchandising20:19 Funding: RevTech, Mercury Fund, and profitability21:56 Freemium, pro, and advertising in the app22:48 700 stores, 10 million shoppers24:28 The flagship deployment: live in 41 days25:56 Ontology, context engineering, and interviewing the retailer27:03 Non-determinism and the eval system29:06 Entry points: sparkles, suggested prompts, and PDP workflows31:01 How the catalog and inventory get in33:41 Procedures: the weekly flyer and the fish rule35:55 Cost, speed, and the token-efficient stream37:38 Model agnostic: scoring Opus against Sonnet38:15 Instacart, Storefront Pro, and winning head-to-head39:47 Retail media and Criteo40:22 Agentic search and the "taco night" problem42:02 Agentic merchandising: 1,000 Fourth of July bundles42:55 Proactive carts, and the 50% who finish in the store43:43 Smart fridges and forecasting demand44:44 Where to find Daniel 👉 Connect with Daniel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkvitiello/👉 Learn more about Cooklist: https://cooklist.com/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    700 Stores, 10 Million Shoppers, $3M Raised: Cooklist CEO & Co-Founder Daniel Vitiello

  3. 8月13日

    Physical AI Hits the Sales Floor: FrontlineIQ CEO & Co-Founder Ben Rodier

    This week Retailgentic goes full Tron… in reverse. Instead of getting sucked into the digital world, Scot steps out of it and into into the analog one, bringing the AI angle with us.  Ben Rodier is the first AI guest on the show who isn’t from e-commerce. He’s building physical AI for the sales floor: an AI sales coach for the people who sell to you face-to-face in furniture stores, apparel shops, bank branches, and beyond. It’s part founder-journey story (three companies, two exits, twenty years in retail) and part product deep dive into how you actually coach a human salesperson with AI without being creepy about it. Highlights  𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝟯𝟬: There’s an inflection point (around 30 AI coaching sessions) where practice turns measurable. Reps who cross it sell roughly $2,000 more per week, about $100,000 more per year, than those who don’t.𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁: Plot the reps who practiced 30+ times against those who practiced 10, and the two lines pull apart into a “crocodile-shaped separation”… the clearest picture of coaching ROI Ben’s ever had.𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: Data (find the goal) → AI role play (practice it) → privacy-compliant listening (coach the real conversation). Each step earns the right to the next.𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲: The coach is a ChatGPT-style voice agent trained on your company’s own playbook. It throws curveballs, like someone walking into the room mid-pitch. “No one likes to do role play with their manager. It’s super awkward.”𝗔 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿: Unlike most training software, if you practice you sell more so the tool pays for itself. 𝗕𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗿: Ben invented retail-media ads on Walmart’s website in 2009 before the term existed. Google execs opened a meeting with: “Who are you, and how did you figure out how to get these properties as advertising publishers?”𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁: McDonald’s tried a humanless AI drive-through and it “failed miserably”. They pivoted right back to a human. Ben’s bet: five years out, most buying and selling is still face-to-face.It’s not often we leave the digital surface behind on this show, but Ben’s take on physical AI, and what happens when the sales floor and the digital world finally connect, is one of the more grounded, human conversations we’ve had. Enjoy the conversation. 00:46 Welcome to Retailgentic02:01 Scot's intro: a fun diversion into physical AI03:47 Meet Ben Rodier, FrontlineIQ04:33 From a TJ Maxx floor to third-time founder06:07 Sales guy, not a technical founder06:53 Corporate to startup: the TV advertising leap07:37 Inventing retail media on Walmart's site in 200910:31 Salesfloor: the original idea13:42 Bootstrapping, PE at the pandemic peak, the Tulip merger17:19 The genesis of FrontlineIQ: Up Labs & Ashley20:10 What "physical AI" actually means21:24 Launching Jan 1, 2025 & hiring AI-native talent24:41 30 customers in under 18 months27:36 The oversubscribed seed round28:46 How it works, part 1: data & trust30:58 Part 2: AI role play in voice mode32:43 Part 3: privacy-compliant listening36:00 The Rule of 30 & the "up" system37:33 Coach the coach, God view & the control center39:48 ROI: the crocodile chart & turnover45:14 The future: cameras, glasses & Plaud pins49:23 Robots on the floor? The McDonald's test51:44 Merchandising insight from what reps hear52:36 Where to learn more & outro 👉 Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrodier/👉 Learn more about FrontlineIQ: https://www.frontlineiq.ai/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    Physical AI Hits the Sales Floor: FrontlineIQ CEO & Co-Founder Ben Rodier

  4. 8月6日

    Baird Managing Director of Internet Research Colin Sebastian: What Wall St. Thinks About Agentic Commerce

    This week Scot goes on a markets deep dive with one of Wall Street's leading internet analysts. It’s a tour through the mega-cap playbook (Meta, Amazon, Google, eBay, Shopify) and how professional investors are actually pricing the agentic-commerce shift. Colin covers over $12 trillion of market cap across five names alone, so this is the view from the models, the channel checks, and the trading desk. This is a wide-ranging, numbers-forward conversation about where the money moves as agents become the buyers and which companies Wall Street thinks come out ahead.  Highlights: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗘𝗗 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: Baird’s formula for internet winners: Scale, Product, Engineering, Efficiency, and Data. Nail all five, and the competitive advantage compounds.“𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴”: Colin explains why skeptics are dramatically underestimating the size of the opportunity.𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿’𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗸: Colin’s highest-conviction AI bet is Meta driven by WhatsApp business agents, Meta AI, and unmatched consumer reach. (Last year’s pick: Google.)𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘁𝘆: The real value won’t live in foundation models, it accrues to the platforms, applications, and distribution layers built on top.𝗔𝗺𝗮𝘇𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿: By opening its catalog to AI agents, Amazon may have crossed a line it can’t reverse and that could strengthen its ecosystem even further.“𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝘆𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀”: If AI agents skip search results and category pages, they also skip the ads, putting pressure on retail media’s biggest revenue stream.𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝘀: The long-term winners will control identity, payments, checkout, and fulfillment, not just discovery.𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗳𝘆: AI could bypass storefronts and even Shop Pay. That uncertainty alone is enough for investors to discount the stock.“𝗪𝗲’𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆”: Colin expects agentic commerce adoption to meaningfully accelerate after Q4, even a one- or two-point lift on today’s numbers would be significant.Colin is one of the sharpest lenses out there on how the market is actually pricing all of this. Enjoy the conversation! Timestamps:3:28 Meet Colin Sebastian5:04 20 years of history & the Wall Street event7:00 From bartender to Baird7:56 Baird's coverage universe & "TMT"9:29 The GTA VI mega-launch call11:12 Buy side vs. sell side, explained13:52 The SPEED framework & top picks16:16 What is agentic commerce?20:05 Sizing it: trillions & consumer surveys22:42 Meta's social-graph advantage25:05 Amazon's walled garden & the one-way door29:40 Google, UCP & why models get commoditized32:36 eBay's used-goods moat39:44 Retail media networks at risk?44:33 OpenAI, ads & the closed-loop logic48:36 Payments: PayPal, stablecoins & who wins51:57 Protocols: UCP vs. ACP52:23 Why Wall Street is nervous about Shopify 👉 Connect with Colin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosebastian/👉 Learn more about Baird: https://www.rwbaird.com/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    Baird Managing Director of Internet Research Colin Sebastian: What Wall St. Thinks About Agentic Commerce

  5. 7月30日

    Shopify's Agentic Commerce Playbook: VP of Product Mani Fazeli on 8X Agentic Traffic Growth and the Long-Tail Boom

    This epsiode is a platform-and-stats deep dive: Scot gets Mani to pin down what agentic commerce actually is (with a four-stage framework that’s the cleanest map we’ve heard), then pulls out a run of genuinely wild numbers on what Shopify is seeing across millions of merchants, before going deep on the catalog, the protocol soup, and everything that shipped in the Spring ‘26 Edition. Highlights: Crawl, walk, run, fly: The framework of the episode. Crawl is AI-driven discovery (the biggest, most impactful stage today); fly is fully discretionary, budget-based buying. Mani’s verdict on where the industry actually is: “somewhere between walk and run today.”8X traffic, 13X orders: Shopify’s Q1 numbers… AI-driven traffic to merchants up 8X year over year, and orders through those channels up 13X.AI buyers just hit harder: New buyers who discover a merchant through AI order at roughly twice the rate of organic search, are about 50% more likely to convert, and spend about 14% more per order because they show up deeper in the consideration funnel.70% of AI orders are long tail: About 70–71% of AI-attributed orders last year fell outside the top 100 product categories. Models “don’t need to learn how to reach for the small merchant, they just need to learn the intent of the buyer.”2X on fresh data: The Shopify catalog, over a billion products across millions of merchants, converts about 2X better than stale or scraped data, thanks to real-time pricing and availability straight from the merchant.A “7 out of 10 at everything”: On how AI is reshaping product, design, and engineering roles.The non-merchant-of-record era: Don’t become the marketplace reselling goods, just be the interface to the merchant. The merchant keeps the customer relationship and runs their own checkout.UCP was a “labor of love”: Shopify was at the genesis of the Universal Commerce Protocol.Sidekick, Pulse & Autopilot: Sidekick usage is up about 4X year over year; Pulse turns Shopify’s data into proactive recommendations right on your admin homepage; and the guiding principle stays “always put the control in the merchant’s hand.”B2B may reach “fly” first: By 2030, Mani splits the world into DTC and wholesale/B2B and bets B2B, where both sides transact professionally and obsess over efficiency, may hit full automation before consumers do.Mani’s four stages are the cleanest map of agentic commerce we’ve heard, and the numbers behind them are frankly staggering. And as he reminds us, we’re still in the early innings. Enjoy the conversation!  Timestamps:03:55 Welcome; watching Shopify's rise from ChannelAdvisor04:38 Mani's path to VP of Product at Shopify06:37 The Wish / ContextLogic founding story08:18 Vibe coding and "AI makes everyone a 7 out of 10"11:10 What Mani owns across the commerce loop12:42 Non-merchant-of-record channels (ChatGPT, Gemini)13:45 Defining agentic commerce14:44 The crawl / walk / run / fly framework17:50 The stats: 8X traffic, 13X orders, +50% conversion, +14% AOV20:03 Out-of-the-box UCP compatibility and agentic storefronts23:10 The Shopify catalog superpower (2x conversion)26:40 WebMCP and the protocol stack (AP2, x402, Web Bot Auth)29:15 UCP: Shopify's labor of love32:24 Top things merchants should do to win35:28 The escalation "escape hatch"37:24 Word of mouth and the long tail, 70% of AI orders42:41 Spring '26 Edition: Shop app, Ship & Pick Up, Pulse, Autopilot48:10 Where it all goes by 2030: B2B vs DTC52:29 Wrap-up 👉 Connect with Mani Fazeli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcfazeli/👉 Learn more about Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/👉 And check out the Shopify newsroom blog here 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    Shopify's Agentic Commerce Playbook: VP of Product Mani Fazeli on 8X Agentic Traffic Growth and the Long-Tail Boom

  6. 7月23日

    AI Is a New Customer Category: Wharton Professor & Bodhium Labs Co-Founder Kartik Hosanagar

    Kartik Hosanagar wears a lot of hats: Wharton professor, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and now co-founder of an applied AI lab building simulation tools for AI search. Scot and Kartik land in almost exactly the same place on where agentic commerce is heading, but they get there from opposite directions: Scot on gut and operator instinct, Kartik on research. The result is a wide-ranging conversation about treating AI as a customer, the levels of agentic commerce, and what brands should actually be doing this week, this quarter, and this year. Highlights: AI is a new customer category: Once shopping goes agentic, Kartik argues you have to ask of AI what you ask of any customer: how do we inform it, persuade it, and what biases does it have? The driverless-car model: Agentic commerce has levels 0–5, just like autonomous vehicles. Level 5 is “buy the shoe and make sure it arrives in a week” hands-off; Instacart-style automation and AI-enabled discovery are lower levels and we’re already in the era.The funnel got outsourced: Top-of-funnel work customers used to do themselves like discovering brands and building a consideration set is now done by AI, so shoppers arrive far later in the funnel. Discovery is “fundamentally transformed.”4 words → 60 words: From his CommerceNext keynote, average search went from about four words on Google to about 60 words on the first ChatGPT turn, then multi-turn. Nobody types “men’s running shoes” anymore; shoes show up on conversation turn seven.UCP, ACP and the protocol wars: Kartik explains Google’s UCP (product feeds today, transactions later), why OpenAI backed off ACP instant checkout, and reads Amazon joining UCP as “testing the waters,” not a strategy reversalCounterfactual simulations: Bodhium builds “digital twins” of ChatGPT and Gemini and spins up virtual worlds where your site looks different, testing a thousand hypotheses in minutes to find what makes AI answers more accurate and favorable. Market research, but for AI.The today / this quarter / this year roadmap: Now: audit conversations, visibility, and which bots read your site. This quarter: build simulators and a UCP/MCP workstream. This year: scale it with agentic workflows. Two front doors: Kartik doesn’t think websites disappear, but “a website is not the right front door for an agent.” Expect a human web door and an MCP door for agents, plus omnichannel behavior where each feeds the other.Kartik calls himself an "agentic commerce maximalist," and after this conversation you'll see why... the research and the gut instinct point the same direction. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps:03:04 Welcome: the "renaissance man" background problem03:49 Kartik's cocktail-party version: academic + entrepreneur, Yodle04:36 The Yodle / Milo mobile-social-local era (and Fidji at OpenAI)06:05 Wharton AI Center and what Kartik researches07:37 The thesis: AI search is more than another channel10:08 Defining agentic commerce: the driverless-car levels12:34 UCP, Gemini, and why Amazon joined15:55 Amazon vs. Walmart strategies (Rufus vs. Sparky)16:29 Bodhium Labs: what it is17:00 The AEO/GEO problem: guesswork and the Reddit trap18:56 Research-led counterfactual simulations21:02 The long tail: multi-turn conversations replace keywords22:49 CommerceNext keynote: 4 words to 60 words24:57 The "AI is just another channel" misconception26:48 Shopper trust: high for discovery, not for checkout28:15 You can't fully control what AI thinks about you30:51 The roadmap: today, this quarter, this year34:41 Rufus, Sparky, UCP, and MCP endpoints36:37 Does agentic commerce grow the pie or shift it?38:32 Do we still need websites? Two front doors40:39 Where to find Kartik: LinkedIn and Substack 👉 Connect with Kartik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kartik-hosanagar-22272115/👉 Learn more about A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525560882?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback👉 Visit his substack: https://hosanagar.substack.com/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    AI Is a New Customer Category: Wharton Professor & Bodhium Labs Co-Founder Kartik Hosanagar

  7. 7月16日

    ‼️EXCLUSIVE 👀 FIRST LOOK 👀: Deloitte Digital’s "Bridging the commerce divide" with Bobby Stephens & Apurva Pangam

    This is a report deep dive, and Deloitte gave Retailgentic the exclusive first look at brand-new research: hundreds of senior merchant leaders and a thousand-plus recent online shoppers, both sides of the counter, with trend data from two years back layered in. The result is a map of where brands and consumers see the same picture and where they see completely different ones. And the data is fresh, fielded this spring, analyzed over the last month, unveiled here. They describe exactly what those leaders do differently, and why it pays off. You want the edge? This is it. Highlights  The basics are the new battleground: Accurate search, real inventory visibility, clear delivery dates, easy returns are no longer differentiators, just expected. And a majority of consumers say brands haven’t improved on them in two years.The perception gap: Only 16–18% of consumers rate brands “excellent,” while brands rate themselves in the low-to-mid 30s, a false-confidence gap that’s driving under-investment where it matters.57 definitions of personalization: the “golden term” has “probably 57 different definitions”, but ~70% of consumers say personalized experiences genuinely matter. Get it wrong and you hurt trust more than you help.14–15 loyalty programs: 99% of surveyed brands offer one and 80% of customers belong to more than one, the average U.S. consumer is a member of 14–15 but active in only four or five. “You are fighting for head space.”The cashback gap: Over half of consumers say cashback is the loyalty benefit they’d value most but only 14% of brands offer it. Customers want financial value and simplicity; brands keep adding tiers and complexity.The leaders’ payoff: Consumers spend 34% more with the brands that nail the basics + personalization + sticky loyalty, 57% will try a new product from them, and 55% will recommend them to family and friends.Efficiency over experience: The two top-reported benefits merchants cite from AI aren’t customer-facing at all, they’re better decision-making and greater efficiency. Brands are getting their own house in order first.Machine-readable product data: Product content is still “teeny tiny” and over-optimized for the keyword era, even as LLMs collapse the old 20-tabs-and-a-spreadsheet decision into one answer. If the data isn’t there, the agent won’t infer it, it just gives what’s available.Connecting the dots: Data, loyalty, and AI in isolation aren’t enough; the winners execute across all three and make deliberate choices about the purpose of the store vs. the site vs. the app vs. the LLM.Fresh data, both sides of the counter, and a clear-eyed read on the gap between what brands think they’re delivering and what shoppers actually feel. Bobby and AP brought the goods. Enjoy the conversation! 👇 Timestamps:01:57 An exclusive first look06:12 Meet Bobby Stephens & Apurva Pangam07:19 AP's background: 20 years in commerce08:01 Bobby's background — buyer to footwear founder09:29 Where they fit in Deloitte's retail team10:18 Inside the report: methodology12:32 The consumer side — the basics14:47 The perception gap & false confidence15:50 Personalization: 57 definitions17:30 On-site agents: Rufus, Sparky & TSA20:02 Playbooks, CDPs & the customer P&L21:21 AI for operational efficiency25:40 Making product data machine-readable26:38 Answer engines & the decision collapse29:34 Loyalty: everyone plays, few win33:52 Who's winning: profiling the leaders38:44 Connecting the dots40:18 Closing & where to find the report 👉 Check out the report: https://www.deloittedigital.com/us/en/insights/research/b2c-commerce-experiences.html👉 Connect with Bobby Stephens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobby-stephens-digital/👉 Connect with Apurva Pangam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apangam/👉 Learn more about Deloitte: https://www.deloitte.com/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    ‼️EXCLUSIVE 👀 FIRST LOOK 👀: Deloitte Digital’s "Bridging the commerce divide" with Bobby Stephens & Apurva Pangam

  8. 7月9日

    Fewer Visitors, 3X the Conversion: Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Chuck Gahun Discusses 'The State of Agentic Commerce (Q2)'

    This one's a research deep dive. Forrester just published "The State of Agentic Commerce" for Q2 2026, a client-only report built on a fresh consumer survey, and its headline read like a splash of cold water: the hype is running past reality.  We invited principal analyst Chuck Gahun on Retailgentic to defend that framing, walk through Forrester's (strict) definition of agentic commerce, and separate what consumers are actually doing from what the market keeps promising.  Highlights  Shopping vs. buying: Forrester defines agentic commerce as “shopping or buying experiences that include AI agents acting autonomously on behalf of consumers, buyers, or sellers”, and until buying is involved, they call it conversational commerce, not agentic commerce.The 38 / 17 gap: Among consumers familiar with answer engines, 38% use them for product discovery but only 17% complete purchases, a trust gap Chuck says is the single thing holding agentic commerce back.Who’s liable?: When something goes wrong on an answer-engine purchase, 44% of consumers said they’d hold the answer engine itself liable, a sign of how many guardrails, policies, and return paths still have to be built.The Amazon corollary: “On Amazon, I’d let my kids, my friends, my family have my credit card and go shopping.” That same trust does not yet transfer to ChatGPT or Gemini, closing that gap is the whole game.The merchant verdict: “We’re not telling anybody to wait. We’re telling them to go in strategically while the commerce trust angle is catching up.”Machine advantage: Forrester’s four-quadrant merchant framework (agentic fit, machine advantage, operations, and organizational adaptability) pushes brands to build content strategy for machines, not just humans.The SKU mountain: The hardest conversation in the field, “you need to upgrade 100,000 SKUs,” and the merchant answers that one SKU takes six months, so “this is gonna take infinite years.” Protocols like OpenAI’s ACP and Google’s UCP keep changing underneath them, on an exponential curve.Old B2B PDFs are gold mines: Those spec-heavy, JavaScript-free product pages everyone mocked turn out to be exactly what agents want, and Chuck says B2B (business & industrial) is actually taking off faster, with a report prediction that 20% of B2B moves to human-authorized, agent-executed transactions by year-end.Death of the retail website?: A companion Forrester paper argues the website isn’t dead, it’s becoming a repository of data for agents. By 2030, Chuck expects “dual optimization”: machines bring the shopper, and the site’s only job is to convert them.Less traffic, 3X conversion: Organic traffic is down, but answer engines filter the traffic so well that conversions are up.A sharp, honest look at where agentic commerce actually is right now: the trust gap, the merchant playbook, and a few 2030 predictions worth arguing about. Enjoy the conversation Timestamps: 03:47 Meet Chuck Gahun, Forrester principal analyst05:03 Chuck's background: two decades, Sapient, the services side07:57 How Forrester's commerce team is structured10:52 Defining agentic commerce: shopping vs. buying12:37 Conversational commerce vs. the strict definition13:49 Semi-autonomous vs. autonomous (the dog-treats test)14:38 Inside the answer-engine consumer survey15:47 The numbers: 38% discover, 17% buy, 62% research16:22 Beyond retail: healthcare, travel, government19:48 Figure 1: owned vs. not-owned, four levels21:47 The trust gap and who's liable (44%)24:37 Marketplaces, merchant of record, and returns27:52 What Forrester tells merchants: don't wait29:57 Product fit, profitability, and the ACP/UCP specs31:58 Figure 3: the four-quadrant framework & machine advantage35:53 The SKU problem and exponential change management38:35 The B2B surge prediction41:25 2030 predictions & death of the retail website46:32 Less traffic, higher conversion: the 3X surprise47:18 Where to find Chuck, events, and outro 👉 Connect with Chuck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckgahun/👉 Learn more about Forrester: https://www.forrester.com/👉 Get the report: https://www.forrester.com/report/the-state-of-agentic-commerce-q2-2026/RES195671 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

    Fewer Visitors, 3X the Conversion: Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Chuck Gahun Discusses 'The State of Agentic Commerce (Q2)'
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番組について

Retailgentic explores consumer behavior and retail trends to help brands and retailers innovate. Join Scot Wingo for expert insights, actionable news, and ecommerce innovation strategies to navigate the future of retail and agentic commerce.

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    Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst
  • 配信期間
    25年 - 26年
  • エピソード
    67
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    不適切な内容を含まない
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    © ReFiBuy, Inc.
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    Retailgentic | Consumer Behavior & Retail Trend

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