AI, Agents and the Future of Shopping: How Agentic Commerce Will Reshape Retail

AI, Agents and the Future of Shopping: How Agentic Commerce Will Reshape Retail, by Simon Ellis, a Head of AI Transformation and Enterprise Architecture - Pets at Home Abstract AI is beginning to change commerce in a much more fundamental way than simply improving recommendations, search or customer service. We are moving towards a world of agentic commerce, where AI agents can understand what consumers want, research products and services, compare alternatives, negotiate trade-offs and increasingly complete transactions on their behalf. This talk explores what happens when the traditional shopping journey starts to disappear and the interface between the consumer and the retailer becomes an intelligent agent. We will look at the rapid development of AI-powered shopping experiences from organisations including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify and others, alongside emerging approaches that could dynamically reconstruct digital experiences around an individual consumer's intent rather than forcing them to navigate conventional websites. The implications for retailers are significant. If an AI agent becomes the primary way that customers discover and select products, traditional advantages such as website design, search rankings, advertising, merchandising and even brand loyalty may start to work very differently.