Retailgentic | Consumer Behavior & Retail Trend

The Infrastructure Behind Agentic Commerce: How Arjun Bhargava Is Building Checkout for AI at Rye

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

Everyone is focused on how AI helps people discover products. But what happens after that? In this episode of Retailgentic, we go deep on the missing layer of agentic commerce: checkout, payments, and fulfillment. Because it turns out, the hardest part isn’t finding the product. It’s buying it.

Rye is building what they describe as the “Stripe for commerce.” It connects AI agents, apps, and platforms to merchants handling:

Checkout and order placement
Payment orchestration
Fulfillment across retailers like Amazon and Shopify

In short: if an AI agent decides what to buy, Rye helps it actually buy it.

Highlights

Checkout is the real bottleneck: Discovery is improving fast, but actually placing an order across fragmented systems is still incredibly hard.
Rye enables real AI purchasing: They connect agents to merchants, allowing products to be bought directly from platforms like Amazon.
Amazon is a critical unlock: Most bots are blocked, but Rye’s API-based approach allows real transactions to go through.
Protocols won’t solve everything: Even if UCP/ACP take off, long-tail merchants and major players won’t fully standardize.
B2B is the sleeper opportunity: Complex procurement decisions are a perfect fit for agent-driven commerce.
AI reduces returns: More context leads to better decisions, driving return rates extremely low.
We’re still early, but close: One breakout use case could flip massive volume into agentic commerce quickly.

Agentic commerce isn’t just about what gets recommended—it’s about what actually gets bought.

Timestamps:

02:00 — Meet Arjun Bhargava and Rye
04:00 — Founding story and early vision
08:00 — Contextual commerce → agentic commerce
11:00 — What Rye does (simple explanation)
14:00 — How AI agents place orders
18:00 — The rye.com story
22:00 — Amazon integration and why it matters
26:00 — Payments, tokenization, and infrastructure
30:00 — UCP vs ACP debate
35:00 — Why protocols won’t cover everything
40:00 — Where agentic commerce is heading
42:00 — B2B opportunity and procurement
46:00 — Real-world AI agent example
47:30 — Closing

👉 Connect with Arjun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhargava/
👉 Learn more about Rye: rye.com

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
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The AI Ad Gold Rush: Inside ChatGPT’s Ad Test, Retail Media’s Next Battle, and the Rise of “AI Media” with Debra Aho Williamson

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Scot sits down with Debra to unpack what might be the most important shift in digital advertising since social media.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening right now, and brands that don’t understand it risk getting left out of the new chain of commerce.

Highlights

Why ChatGPT’s ad rollout is just the beginning, not an experiment
The tension between trust vs. monetization in AI interfaces
How retailers are both excited and terrified of AI shopping agents
The emergence of “AI Media” as a new category (like social + retail media before it)
Why current ad formats are “boring”… and what comes next
How companies should actually prepare (hint: it’s not just media buying)
The shift from advertising to agent influence, and what that means for the future

We’re still early, but not that early. The rules of digital advertising are being rewritten in real time, and for the first time in decades, the winners aren’t obvious. The question isn’t whether AI will reshape commerce. It’s whether your products, and your data, are ready to compete when agents decide what gets bought.

Timestamps:

02:19 – Meet Debra Aho Williamson

05:00 – From social media to AI: spotting the next shift

09:00 – What “AI Ad Economy” actually means

11:00 – Are we at a social media–level inflection point?

13:00 – ChatGPT ads: early signals and what matters

16:00 – Why current AI ads look like search ads

18:00 – Trust vs. monetization: the line platforms can’t cross

23:00 – Why retailers are leading AI ad adoption

25:00 – Google’s AI ad strategy vs. ChatGPT

29:00 – Perplexity, Copilot, and the fragmented landscape

33:00 – Where Meta fits (and why it’s surprising)

35:00 – New ad formats: sponsored prompts + conversational ads

38:00 – Reddit, TikTok, and emerging players

40:00 – How brands should prepare for AI media

43:00 – Why structured product data is critical

45:00 – The future: ads for agents, not humans

👉 Connect with Debra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debrawilliamson/
👉 Learn more about Sonata Insights: https://www.sonatainsights.com/

Retailgentic Exclusive: Live from the Shoptalk AI Stage - The First Shoptalk Debate: Will AI Agents Transform Retail?

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:30:08 -0700

Today we’re dropping a surprise podcast that is different than anything we’ve done before and a first of it’s kind! Scot Wingo was invited by Ben Miller, VP of Content and Strategy to participate in the first ever shoptalk debate format talk. The topic - Agentic Commerce Will AI agents transform retail?

On the pro agentic side we had Ekta Chopin, CDO at ELF Beauty and myself. If you’re not familiar with Ekta, she’s a thought leading CDO and has a great substack for other CDOs.

On the ‘anti agentic side’ we had Sarah Marzano, Principal Analyst, Retail Ecommerce and Retail Media at Emarketer and Andrew Lipsman - independent analyst and consultant for media, ads and commerce.

Before the show, Scot asked and received permission from Shoptalk and all the participants to turn the raw audio into a podcast. In the AI era, speed matters so we are getting this in your hands only 2 days after it happened.

This debate took place at 12pm PDT on Tuesday March 24th at Shoptalk’s AI Stage.

Timestamps
00:01 – Why this episode is different from anything Retailgentic has done before
01:28 – The Shoptalk debate topic: Will AI Agents Transform Retail?
02:04 – Meet the debaters: Ekta Chopra, Andrew Lipsman, and Sarah Marzano
07:48 – The first big battle: how should agentic commerce be defined?
10:25 – Scot’s argument: consumers are already changing behavior faster than many retailers realize
13:16 – Sarah’s pushback: brands need clarity before making big bets
15:18 – Consumer adoption: how much automation will shoppers really accept?
17:16 – Why product data and offer-card visibility matter now
19:05 – Andrew’s argument: shopping still requires human decision-making
23:05 – Ekta on brand visibility, content readiness, and why this matters for beauty
24:49 – 2030 predictions: will 10% of e-commerce be bot-to-bot?
27:03 – Does agentic commerce threaten retail media?
29:11 – Sarah’s case for why AI referrals may actually help retailers
32:22 – Ekta on why rich product data matters more than media for e.l.f.
33:06 – Scot’s case that traffic decline is already starting in some categories
37:16 – What brands and retailers should do over the next 6–18 months
40:25 – Why Sarah says brands should test, but not overreact
42:11 – Scot’s closing case for why this shift is fundamentally different
43:22 – Andrew’s closing warning against fear-based decision-making

Ashish Gupta, VP/GM of Merchant Shopping at Google: UCP Deep Dive, Nerding out on Product Data Feeds, the importance of Product-Level Context PLUS Google's Vision for Agentic Commerce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:53:34 -0700

This episode explores the shift from traditional search and ecommerce flows into a new agentic commerce environment where shoppers are using AI surfaces to discover, compare, and increasingly delegate parts of the buying journey.

Ashish explains what Google was seeing internally that led to the development of UCP, why the protocol was designed to be open and ecosystem-wide, and why the ambition goes far beyond checkout. He also shares how Google is thinking about discovery, conversational product data, merchant readiness, and the long-term role of AI across the shopping journey.

For retailers, brands, marketplaces, and commerce tech teams, this conversation is a helpful window into what Google believes is changing now, and what foundations businesses should be investing in before the market fully shifts.

Highlights

How Google’s large-scale ad and data systems shaped his approach to commerce
Why UCP emerged now, and the two major trends that inspired it
Why Google believes agentic commerce needs an open, ecosystem-wide standard
Why the future of UCP extends far beyond checkout
How discovery is starting to take shape within the protocol
Why richer, more conversational product data matters in AI shopping experiences
What retailers need to do now to improve visibility on AI surfaces
How Google is thinking about the relationship between agentic commerce and advertising
Why agentic commerce is still early, but already moving from concept to reality

Agentic commerce is still early, but this conversation makes one thing clear: the infrastructure decisions being made now will shape who gets discovered, considered, and chosen in the next era of shopping.

Timestamps
2:32 — Welcome and introduction to Ashish Gupta

5:01 — Building Google’s data infrastructure and declarative querying at scale

9:43 — AI at Google before the current wave

11:32 — What it means to be an Engineering Fellow at Google

14:00 — Balancing technical leadership and operational leadership

16:10 — Why Ashish moved into merchant shopping

17:41 — The origin story behind UCP

24:58 — Why Google chose an open protocol approach

27:50 — Responding to skepticism around Google’s commerce efforts

32:30 — Discovery, catalog search, and where UCP expands next

35:39 — Multi-item and multi-merchant cart support

37:43 — New protocol capabilities and partner onboarding

38:42 — Why product data quality matters more in AI shopping

43:22 — How shoppers are using AI surfaces in more complex ways

47:47 — Agentic commerce and advertising

50:10 — Where agentic commerce may go from here

51:46 — Closing thoughts and where to follow Ashish

👉 Connect with Ashish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/
👉 Check out UCP announcement: https://www.retailgentic.com/p/flash-googlenrf-announces-universal

Inside Vendee Labs: Darryl Carlton and Ross Gardiner on Building Buyer-First Agentic Commerce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we take a deep dive into what buyer-side agentic commerce could actually look like. The conversation explores the origins of the company, why Darryl and Ross focused on reducing friction for buyers, and how that unexpectedly opened up solutions for sellers, payment providers, and enterprise procurement teams as well.

The episode also features a live demo of Vendee Labs’ platform, showing conversational discovery, real-time product retrieval, multi-vendor carting, and a multi-item ACP checkout flow.

Highlights

Why Vendee Labs is approaching agentic commerce from the buyer’s perspective
The founding story behind the company and the friction that inspired it
How ChatGPT and Claude changed the direction of the product
A live demo of conversational commerce across real merchants
What a multi-vendor, multi-item ACP checkout could mean for online shopping
Why autonomous commerce needs legal and governance frameworks, not just AI
The vision for a Universal Protocol Bridge across ACP, UCP, and future standards
How strong permissions and audit trails could reduce chargebacks and disputes
Why poor product data creates broken outcomes in agentic shopping
Where Vendee Labs sees opportunity across consumer, B2B, procurement, and white-label use cases

Vendee Labs is betting that the future of commerce won’t just be agent-powered—it will be buyer-centered, trust-driven, and built to work across whatever protocols come next.

Timestamps:
00:06:09 — Ross shares his background in global technology planning and delivery
00:07:23 — Darryl shares his background in retail IT, telecom, AI, and governance
00:08:53 — Darryl reflects on AI before and after the ChatGPT moment
00:10:03 — Discussion on LLMs, explainability, and true intelligence
00:11:26 — The founding story behind Vendee Labs
00:13:13 — How the product evolved into its current form
00:16:06 — The Vendee Labs pitch: changing how the world buys
00:17:06 — Why solving buyer friction also solves seller-side pain points
00:20:18 — Live demo begins
00:21:10 — Running shoes search and conversational discovery demo
00:25:42 — Multi-vendor cart and checkout walkthrough
00:31:06 — Why richer product data is critical for agentic commerce
00:35:46 — Consumer, B2B, procurement, and white-label distribution paths
00:38:46 — Team size, bootstrapping, and current company stage
00:40:39 — Ross outlines roadmap, buyer taxonomy, and MVP plans
00:42:15 — Scot and Darryl discuss adoption speed in agentic commerce
00:44:18 — Darryl’s theory on trust events and adoption
00:45:34 — Governance-by-design versus fixing broken outputs later
00:47:46 — Where to learn more and try the demo

👉 Connect with Darryl: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylcarlton/
👉 Connect with Ross: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossgardiner/
👉 Check out the demo: https://vendeelabs.com/

Exploring the Intersection of OpenClaw and Agentic Commerce:lobster: - the Retailgentic Podcast OpenClaw Deep Dive

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode of the top Agentic Commerce Podcast we explore the powerful shopping powers of the OpenClaw open-source agent. Can the Claw shop on Amazon, shop locally and use the VisionClaw system with META Ray-Ban’s to buy a very hard to search for dog treat? Tune in to find out!

Highlights:

What OpenClaw is (and why “persistent” changes everything)
The real difference between OpenClaw vs. ChatGPT/Claude as tools
How OpenClaw runs (Mac Mini vs. cloud VPS like DigitalOcean)
Why “no guardrails” is both the innovation and the risk
Risk mitigation: limiting blast radius with single-use virtual cards
Why browser-driven commerce is riskier than server-to-server protocols (ACP/UCP)
The “skills” layer: how OpenClaw becomes extensible like Lego bricks
Why SERP-style APIs beat slow webpage crawling for shopping tasks
Live demos: product search, local inventory, and frictionless checkout
Using Slack as the agent interface (channels for shopping, health, etc.)
The sci-fi moment: Meta Ray-Ban glasses + VisionClaw + Gemini for visual shopping

OpenClaw isn’t the final answer for agentic commerce, security and architecture matter, but it is an incredible preview of where the UX is heading. If you want a glimpse of the “always-on shopping agent” future (and how people are hacking it together right now), this one’s for you. Happy agentic commerce.🦞

Timestamps:

01:38 — OpenClaw takeover begins: why Scot called Ryan as a lifeline

05:26 — What OpenClaw is: persistent agent, open source, “unhinged,” and why that matters

08:21 — The “gigantic loop”: always-on agent behavior (old-school “cron jobs,” new-school autonomy)

09:26 — The killer feature: OpenClaw keeps working after you close your laptop

12:33 — Read-only Gmail as an assistant: catching missed emails + reducing cognitive load

14:35 — The trap: spending time building automation to “save time” (catch-22)

15:33 — Why OpenClaw-style commerce is riskier than ACP/UCP: browser manipulation

18:02 — Gateway Dashboard tour: where OpenClaw is configured (channels, skills, cron jobs)

20:30 — Skill spotlight: Rye for agentic Amazon-friendly purchasing

22:39 — Skill spotlight: SERP API for faster product search + ratings without crawling

24:30 — Skill spotlight: Buy Anything for context-filled checkout (address, identity, card)

28:19 — Demo: “Find me the 5 best-rated 65-inch TVs” (online + local)

35:20 — Live purchase demo: finding USB-C cables, choosing Anker, and the agent checks out

37:05 — “Most frictionless checkout”: no login, agent already knows everything

37:31 — What this means for Alexa: why “available 24/7” changes habits

39:07 — Meta Glasses demo setup: first-person vision commerce

40:24 — Vision commerce in action: identifies product + searches best price automatically

41:34 — Multi-store results: Amazon + Chewy + Walmart links dropped into Slack

👉 Connect with Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryaneade/

Kiri Master's Round 2: The Ad Wars Come to Agentic Commerce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 02:00:00 -0800

Retail media has been a profit engine for retailers, especially onsite sponsored product ads with massive margins. But what happens when shopping shifts from browsing and searching to AI agents that “decide the SKU” before a shopper ever hits a retailer site? In this episode, Scot and Kiri map the collision course between retail media networks and agentic commerce, walk through emerging ad formats from Google, Amazon (Rufus), and LLMs, and dig into the hardest problem of all: monetizing AI attention without breaking trust.

What’s Covered:

Why agentic shopping compresses the journey, and shrinks onsite ad inventory
The “two threats” to onsite retail media
How offsite retail media depends on audience signals that may dry up as browsing declines
Why in-store media may be the most resilient channel
Google’s “Direct Offers,” the rise of an agentic storefront, and what it unlocks
The emerging idea of “Agentic PLAs” and retailers bidding at the SKU level (Buy Box vibes)
Kiri’s wishlist: multimodal ads (video/try-ons), offsite audience extension, and contextual targeting over “creepy” behavioral retargeting

Agentic commerce won’t kill advertising, but it will force it to evolve fast. The winners will be the platforms that can monetize attention without sacrificing trust, and the brands/retailers that learn to show up in these new surfaces early.

Timestamps

00:05:04 — Meet Kiri Masters + Retail Media Breakfast Club
00:08:01 — The three buckets: onsite, offsite, in-store retail media
00:10:01 — Why onsite is the money machine (and most vulnerable)
00:11:11 — Offsite retail media + closed-loop attribution
00:14:23 — In-store media: small today, resilient tomorrow
00:16:11 — Are retailers already seeing traffic shifts? Category matters
00:19:27 — ChatGPT ads: early signals and why it’s still rudimentary
00:21:22 — Scott’s framework: ad formats + Instant Checkout incentives
00:23:06 — Google’s “Direct Offers” and the agentic storefront idea
00:25:10 — Collaborative bidding: retailer + brand split the spend
00:28:11 — Google testing new units: “Agentic PLA” / paid retailer placement
00:33:14 — Trust vs monetization: don’t break the golden goose
00:34:04 — Amazon Rufus: sponsored prompts as a new surface
00:39:08 — Instacart’s ad playbook + trade dollars as inspiration
00:40:38 — Why it’s not a race to the bottom: service layers + loyalty
00:43:24 — The big hope: context-based targeting over creepy retargeting
k00:46:52 — If Kiri ran ChatGPT ads: offsite + multimodal + new formats
00:48:04 — Virtual try-ons + “throw away the sponsored product textbook”
00:50:00 — Closing + follow Retailgentic

👉 Connect with Kiri: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiri-masters/
👉 Learn more about Retail Media Breakfast Club: https://www.retailmediabreakfastclub.com

True Fit Announces Agentic Commerce Agent To Solve the Fit/Sizing-Driven $850B Returns Crisis Facing Fashion Online Retailers

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:59:52 -0800

True Fit is evolving from a static “what size should I buy?” widget into a conversational agent that can handle the nuanced questions shoppers actually ask: comfort, flattering fit, fabric behavior, and edge cases like petite proportions. We also dig into how vertical agents (like True Fit) can accelerate horizontal super-agents via Model Context Protocol (MCP), and why the future of agentic shopping will be built on clean, structured, prioritized proprietary data, not scraped internet sentiment.

Highlights

True Fit’s specialized size + fit agent (and why it matters now)
Why 70% of fashion agent questions are about size/fit
The “Fit Passport”: from form-filling to natural conversation profiling
What generic agents miss: real-time sales + returns behavior, not just PDPs/reviews
Vertical vs. horizontal agents, and how True Fit uses MCP as an accelerant
The unglamorous moat: data cleaning, normalization, canonicalization
True Fit scale: 80M active users, hundreds of millions of profiles, ~100K brands, ~500 retailers

If agentic commerce is collapsing the funnel, fit is one of the biggest friction points left, and True Fit is making it a first-class agent powered by the kind of data most models will never see.

Timestamps

01:44 — Breaking news episode + guest intro (Jessica Murphy, True Fit)

03:12 — True Fit announces a specialized size + fit agent

04:20 — From static widget to agentic shopping assistant

05:47 — Why fit-related returns are so brutal in apparel

07:02 — What the agent experience looks like

08:05 — “Fit Passport” and conversational profiling

09:07 — Where checkout happens (and what’s coming later)

10:17 — Why generic agents break: stale info + limited context

11:35 — The moat: structuring + cleaning sizing data

12:30 — Vertical vs. horizontal agents

13:29 — MCP as an accelerant for super-agents

15:18 — Top-of-funnel value: narrowing choices to “most likely kept”

16:10 — Who might use TrueFit’s MCP (LLMs + agent builders)

16:37 — Availability: March partners, April target GA

18:01 — Founder story: why Jessica started True Fit

19:41 — Fundraising reality + “it’s a data problem”

21:16 — True Fit scale + global complexity of sizing

👉 Connect with Jessica: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-murphy-68a8b8/
👉 Learn more about True Fit: https://www.truefit.com/

Saurabh Vijayvergia & Brian McCarthy from Deloitte on Trust, Catalogs, and the Real Agentic Commerce Stack

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:00:00 -0800

There’s a fundamental difference between adding AI to today’s ecommerce workflows and re-architecting commerce for an agent-driven world.

In this episode, we start with Deloitte’s Agentic Commerce paper and quickly fan out into what’s changed since its release. If you’re trying to separate signal from noise in the rush toward AI-powered shopping, this conversation grounds Agentic Commerce in real systems, real economics, and real decisions retailers need to make now.

Highlights

Why Agentic Commerce is a paradigm shift, not a bundle of AI features
The evolution from SEO → GEO → ACO, and why GEO is just a waypoint
The two biggest misconceptions Deloitte is hearing from retailers and brands
Why structured product + data catalogs are the no-regret investment
The real question execs keep asking: Where do we start? (and what’s measurable)
The “Acommerce ecosystem”: orchestrators + specialized “nano agents”
Trust, security, returns, customer service, and why this can’t be a side project
Forecasts for how big agentic commerce gets, and why the point is: it moves the needle

Agentic commerce is becoming a new channel with new unit economics, and the brands and retailers that get their product truth, governance, and trust foundations right now will be the ones that win when agents become the default interface.

Timestamps:
01:54 — Meet Deloitte

02:10 — The paper: Agentic Commerce: Redefining Retail Economics

03:55 — ACO + the SEO/GEO conversation

04:11 — VJ’s background: SAP → Deloitte, retail AI intersection

05:50 — Brian’s background: supply chain → strategy → consulting

07:49 — “Traditional AI” vs GenAI in retail

09:38 — Why Deloitte wrote the paper (and why GEO isn’t the endpoint)

11:49 — Deloitte’s definition: why it’s a journey, not a switch

13:33 — NRF vibe check + what’s changed since December

14:27 — Common misconceptions (and what leaders miss end-to-end)

16:14 — The questions execs are asking: where to start + ROI

18:03 — Why this could be a golden age of storytelling + loyalty

21:06 — The no-regret starting point: catalogs + structured data

21:34 — Org design + governance + democratizing AI usage

23:15 — CFO-ready thinking: measuring value by channel

26:12 — Zero-click pressure + “what are you doing about it?”

28:31 — Balanced portfolio: fast wins vs complex upside

30:32 — The core distinction, again: AI add-ons vs agentic redesign

31:18 — Do we still need websites? (channels vs replacement)

33:17 — Deloitte’s role: advise, build, operate

37:29 — “Acommerce” + ecosystems of nano agents

41:31 — Protocols + UCP + what changes next

42:50 — Meta, OpenAI, Google: where this is headed

46:58 — 2030 forecasts: conservative vs aggressive cases

50:02 — Where to follow Saurabh's podcast: The Retail Tales

👉 Connect with Saurabh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/svijayvergia/
👉 Connect with Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancmccarthy/
👉 Learn more about Deloitte: https://www.deloitte.com/us/en.html

Check out the materials we discuss:
🔗 Agentic Commerce: Redefining Retail Economic

Sensor Tower SVP Ian Simpson breaks down Holiday ’25 funnel data, conversion lift, and what brands should do next.

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode, Scot digs into a question he keeps getting from readers and listeners: What’s actually going on inside Amazon’s Rufus, and what should brands do about it?

Ian brings fresh analysis from Sensor Tower’s panel-based methodology (privacy-compliant, double opt-in), walking through Holiday ’25 shopping sessions to show where Rufus shows up in the funnel, how usage spikes during peak moments, and why it appears to correlate with dramatically higher conversion. Along the way, they zoom out to the bigger shift: as more people learn to “talk to AI” (thanks to ChatGPT-style habits), conversational shopping becomes increasingly normal, and increasingly hard to “optimize” using old keyword-era tactics.

Highlights:

“The consumer is trained.” A year of daily conversational AI use has taught people how to prompt, so when they see Amazon Rufus, they already know how to use it.
Rufus sessions show a major conversion lift. In Ian’s read of the report: ~3.5× lift vs. non-Rufus sessions, with Rufus-touch sessions far more likely to end in purchase.
Rufus had outsized influence during Holiday ’25. A large share of purchases included Rufus interaction, even if not every session did.
Their team mapped ten distinct Rufus-assisted shopping paths, including the standout “Research Conversationalist” profile.
Correlation vs causation is real. Ian flags measurement caveats: not every “non-Rufus session” is a shopping mission; intent bias exists; so the takeaway is directional, but meaningful.
Brands should shift from “keyword jail” to “product truth.” Better attributes, clearer specs, stronger review signals, and real storytelling matter more in conversational shopping.
AEO anxiety + the brand-level rebound. Ian argues the future isn’t just “optimize for prompts”, it may reward brands with stronger reputation and social proof signals (think forums and communities).
AI can talk consumers out of premium. They’ve seen examples where AI steers price-sensitive users away from expensive brands, an early warning system for brand teams.
Retail media won’t vanish, but it will mutate. In a lower-click world, retailers will experiment heavily to preserve value, without turning the experience into ad soup.

If you’ve been treating Rufus like a curiosity, this data makes it hard to ignore: conversational commerce isn’t “coming”, it’s already shaping how high-intent shoppers decide.

Timestamps:

00:00 – The Consumer Is Now Trained

02:09 – Why This Episode Focuses on Rufus

05:49 – Ian Simpson’s Background

06:47 – Founding a Bottled Tea Startup

09:14 – Pathmatics → Sensor Tower Acquisition

10:11 – How Retail Media Intelligence Was Born

13:50 – How Sensor Tower Delivers Its Data

15:36 – Why Sensor Tower Started Tracking Agentic Commerce

21:08 – How the Rufus Analysis Was Done

22:48 – The 3.5× Conversion Lift Explained

24:18 – Amazon’s $10B Rufus Claim vs. Independent Data

28:16 – Correlation vs. Causation in Rufus Usage

31:23 – Rufus as a Research Companion

32:20 – The Cup Holder Story (Problem-Based Shopping)

39:55 – Why Rufus Usage Sticks After the Holidays

40:19 – The 10 Rufus Shopping Profiles

41:35 – The “Research Conversationalist” Funnel

45:00 – Why “AEO” Makes Ian Nervous

46:47 – Brand Matters Again in Agentic Commerce

48:47 – When AI Talks Consumers Out of Premium Products

58:21 – Retail Media’s Future in a Low-Click World

01:01:31 – Avoiding the Minority Report Ad Nightmare

01:06:21 – Instacart: The Wild West of Retail Media

01:07:15 – Where to Follow Ian

👉 Connect with Ian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansimpson/
👉 Learn more about Sensor Tower: https://sensortower.com

Check out the materials we discuss:
🔗 Sensor Tower Black Friday AI Trend Update
🔗 How Amazon’s Rufus Shaped Holiday Shopping

Ken Moore, Mastercard Chief Innovation Officer, on the Blueprint for Agentic Commerce: Trust, Tokens & “Know Your Agent”

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 01:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot and Ken map out how Mastercard saw agentic commerce coming early, and what they built in 2025 to prepare the ecosystem, especially around trust, identity, consent, and tokenization.

We dig into:

How Mastercard Foundry takes ideas from experiments → production-grade products → global scale
“Know Your Agent”: registering legitimate agents (agentic equivalent of KYC/KYB) to reduce malicious bot risk
“Order Intent”: adding richer context so that with consent, agents/merchants can fulfill the right order (not just process a payment)
Why consumer consent is non-negotiable (passkeys/biometrics + tokenized credentials)
Mastercard Insight Tokens: a secure and governed way for agents to access and apply permissioned insights from Mastercard, which will enable consumers to receive, with their consent, more personalized and useful experiences
Agentic Toolkit and why Mastercard leaned into services to support customers move from strategy → execution fast
Mastercard’s Agent Pay Acceptance Framework: helps merchants to
transact with trusted agents with a minimal lift
Standards: why Mastercard will support ACP + AP2 and expects interoperability (or convergence) over time

Agentic commerce won’t be won by whoever moves fastest, it’ll be won by whoever earns trust at scale.

Key timestamps

05:14 — Ken’s background: technologist, global banking work, startups, Accenture, Citi → Mastercard Foundry
07:44 — How Foundry works: experiment, build, then “graduate” products into core teams
10:32 — The pace-of-change thesis: why organizations must be built to adapt continuously
13:07 — How Mastercard saw agentic commerce early (signal-spotting in 2024)
14:23 — The 3 converging forces: AI reasoning, compute, and foundations (tokens/passkeys/consent)
19:01 — AgentPay launch + what it includes (Know Your Agent, Order Intent)
21:05 — Consumer consent, passkeys/biometrics, and tokenizing payment credentials
22:25 — First agentic transaction (partner example)
23:19 — Agentic Toolkit + Insight Tokens + consulting expansion
26:00 — Merchant Acceptance Framework + scaling agentic readiness for the “long tail” of merchants
27:13 — Tokenization explained simply (cocktail-party version)
29:37 — Passkeys explained (biometric identity replacing passwords)
33:37 — Returns problem + how agentic workflows could reduce “buy 3, return 2”
40:19 — Standards wars: ACP vs AP2 + why Mastercard stays agnostic
44:03 — Crystal ball: adoption, trust, and why B2B may go autonomous faster
47:43 — The travel agent analogy: why some flows stay assisted by choice

👉 Connect with Ken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-moore-cio/
👉 Learn more about Mastercard: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en.html

🔗 Agentic Toolkit: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/september/mastercard-unveils-new-tools-and-collaborations-to-power-smarter,-safer-agentic-commerce.html
🔗Agentic Commerce Rules, Mastercard Joins Google: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/stories/2026/agentic-commerce-rules-of-the-road.html
🔗Agent Suite: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2026/january/mastercard-launches-agent-suite-to-ready-enterprises-for-a-new-e.html

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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Maia Josebachvili on Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Playbook

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 02:00:00 -0800

Consumer behavior is already shifting, people are asking LLMs what to buy, building shopping lists in chat, and moving through commerce in new ways. In this episode of Retailgenic, Scot sits down with Maia to unpack what “agentic commerce” actually means, why Stripe is moving fast, and what merchants can do now to get ready for checkout inside AI experiences.

They discuss:

Why agentic commerce is a spectrum: fully autonomous agents vs. AI-assisted buying inside chat interfaces
Stripe’s four AI focus areas (and why agentic commerce is only one bucket)
The big initiatives driving Stripe’s agentic push
What Copilot Checkout looks like in practice: Stripe-powered checkout embedded natively in chat
How Stripe is approaching merchant control and merchant-of-record requirements
How product discoverability works today (feeds + syndicator integrations) vs. the longer-term self-serve vision
What merchants are asking for most: fraud, trust, identity, and governance in an agent-led world
The “why now” moment: traffic shifts, zero-click pressure, and board-level attention accelerating experiments

Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical, it’s becoming a real channel. The winners will be the merchants who make their catalogs discoverable, keep control of checkout, and build trust and fraud defenses for an AI-led future.

Notable Timestamps
02:06 – Scot introduces Maia, AI CRO at Stripe
04:07 – Maia’s background: e-commerce founder → LivingSocial → Stripe
06:54 – Stripe’s 4 AI buckets (infrastructure, AI across payments, dev tools, agentic commerce)
09:22 – The “agentic commerce is a mirage” debate + definition confusion
10:43 – Maia’s spectrum definition: autonomous vs. chat-native buying
14:40 – Copilot Checkout: what it is, how Stripe fits, and where to sign up (waitlist)
18:15 – Agentic Commerce Suite: discoverability, checkout/fraud, choosing agents in dashboard
20:04 – How products become discoverable: direct feed vs. syndicators + onboarding reality today
21:15 – Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs): secure handoff + merchant-of-record control
24:05 – Merchant sentiment shift: from skepticism → exec sponsors + resources dedicated
29:37 – Fraud + trust layer: Radar expansion, Link wallet, and SPT fraud signals
31:58 – 2030 sizing: Stripe won’t pick a %, but “this is happening”
33:07 – Where to follow Maia/Stripe + NRF context

👉 Connect with Maia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maiaj/
👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 Learn more about Stripe: https://stripe.com/payments/ai

Jason Goldberg's Full NRF Keynote on Agentic Commerce: "Commerce Disrupted: Rise of the AI Native consumer"

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 07:16:15 -0800

This week on the retailgentic podcast, we have an experiment for you. NRF concluded Tuesday Jan 13th and Scot's good friend and podcast partner over at the Jason and Scot show, Jason Goldberg (Chief Digital Commerce Officer at Publicis) was invited to ‘tie the bow’ on the conference in the last keynote: Commerce Disrupted: Rise of the AI Native Consumer.

This episode is the audio from that presentation on 1/13/26. Jason covers:

Agentic commerce, defined clearly: not “AI efficiencies,” but new consumer behaviors (and the full “iceberg” of influence, not just robot-takes-card transactions).
Is it hype or historic? Jason frames the debate (skeptics vs believers) and uses live audience polling to set the stakes.
A disruption of discovery: the decline of “saw in store,” then “search,” then “social”, and now the robot becomes the front door.
The cautionary tale (Tudor Ice): why incumbents often miss the next business model, even when they dominated the last one.
Retail growth is concentrated: a few giants capture a huge share of growth, while challengers (Shein/Temu/TikTok Shop) rewrite the playbook.
AI shopping ramps fast: from research → to product tiles → to direct purchase inside AI experiences, plus retailer catalogs moving upstream.
0-click commerce: the next leap isn’t fewer clicks, it’s no clicks (automation, replenishment, “never let me run out”).
Onsite vs offsite agents: retailers’ on-site assistants (ex: Amazon) vs consumers using neutral offsite agents that choose the retailer for them.
Winning the robots: why optimization shifts toward what models care about (criteria, sources, “GEO/AEO/ACO”), and why this changes constantly.
Change management wins: Doug McMillon’s “How did you use AI to prepare?” as a culture lever—and why org adoption matters as much as tech.

If AI changes the way people discover, it changes everything downstream. Brands, retailers, and platforms all have to learn to win the robot’s shelf.

Notable timestamps

00:00 — The real disruption: new consumer behavior, not efficiency gains
01:43 — Scott sets up the “special episode” + NRF context
03:17 — The experiment: “put you in the audience” (keynote replay)
06:29 — The big questions: how big is agentic commerce + who wins?
08:07 — Skeptics vs believers: “hallucination” vs “overhyped” vs transformational
11:05 — Defining agentic commerce + the “influence vs transaction” iceberg
15:07 — Tudor Ice story: disruption, incumbents, and missing the next model
19:14 — $5.3T retail + who captured the growth (concentration)
22:16 — “Disruption of discovery”: saw-in-store → search → social
25:04 — Viral demand shock example (whipped coffee)
26:53 — Sunscreen example + TikTok → then “ask the robot”
29:08 — “How fast this changed” (recent launches + ecosystem momentum)
30:19 — From “order” to “never let me run out” (automation framing)
31:11 — Clicks: 22 → 4 → “one-click” → 0-click
32:40 — Proof points: agent assistants and rising adoption
33:49 — Offsite agents: buying without choosing a retailer first
34:03 — In-store: pointing ChatGPT at the shelf (real-world agent use)
36:29 — Scale math: small % of prompts can still be massive volume
38:34 — Robots optimize differently + why brands need new processes/tools
39:36 — GEO/AEO vs the bigger strategic layer (Agentic Commerce Optimization)
40:33 — Doug McMillon’s culture lever: “How did you use AI to prepare?”
42:12 — Final message: change management to avoid being the “ice harvesters”

👉 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasongoldberg/
👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 See the slides: https://open.substack.com/pub/scotwingorefibuy/p/jason-goldbergs-full-nrf-keynote

FLASH: Google Goes ALL-IN on Agentic Commerce at NRF: UCP, Gemini Checkout, Shopify and more

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 07:00:47 -0800

Today we have a special FLASH episode - no fancy intros, just the news as it's breaking at NRF.

Hamish Gunasekara, CEO of Catalog, on Why Agentic Commerce Starts With Product Data

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 02:00:00 -0800

Consumer behavior doesn’t change overnight, even when the technology is obvious. In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with Hamish Gunasekara to unpack why agentic commerce is inevitable, why it’s moving slower than the hype suggests, and why product data infrastructure, not checkout, is the real unlock.

We cover:

Why “fully autonomous shopping” is the wrong definition of agentic commerce
Why consumer habits change slower than technology
Why global mega-catalogs don’t work (and never really have)
How vertical AI shopping experiences can thrive alongside ChatGPT
The hidden trust and governance problem no one is talking about
Why product catalogs are the hardest unsolved problem in commerce

If you’re a retailer, brand, agent builder, or investor trying to understand what actually matters in the agentic commerce stack, this episode is foundational.

Timestamps:
02:39 Meet Hamish & the origin of Catalog
04:55 From Afterpay to Cash App Commerce
11:30 The Naya experiment & lessons learned
14:24 How AI is changing discovery
16:08 Why catalog data is broken
18:30 Fundraising & early traction
20:48 Who Catalog is built for
23:20 Why global catalogs don’t work
28:30 The agentic commerce stack
33:40 Defining agentic commerce (correctly)
37:30 Why vertical agents will win
43:45 Trust, governance, and adoption
44:51 Where to learn more

👉 Connect with Hamish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamish-gunasekara/
👉 Learn more about Catalog: https://getcatalog.ai/

Matt Nichols Returns: What 2025 Got Right (and Wrong) About Agentic Commerce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 02:00:00 -0800

Matt Nichols is back, and a lot has changed since his first appearance on Retailgentic. Scot and Matt revisit the predictions he made six months ago, look at what came true far faster than expected, and dig into the infrastructure challenges that still stand between us and frictionless agentic transactions. From SKU mapping and API-first checkout to the economics of feeds and the future of retailer traffic, this episode is a full-stack view of where Agentic Commerce stands at the end of 2025, and what’s coming in 2026.

If you want more of Matt’s backstory and Commerce Ventures’ thesis, listen to Episode 4! It pairs perfectly with this deep dive. In this episode, they cover:

Why VC predictions used to take 5–10 years to play out… and now take 5–10 weeks
What Commerce Ventures is hearing from both startups and their LP base (top retailers + PSPs)
Why ACP isn’t “the solution”—and what infrastructure still needs to be built
The “API vs. fake-it-til-you-make-it” debate in agentic transactions
How retailers should think about feeds, reviews, and blocking scrapers
Why “AI magic on your own site” is step one for most brands
Predictions for 2026: traffic shifts, wallet battles, Apple’s eventual entry, and more
Where Matt thinks the industry is overly optimistic, and where the real upside is

If this year taught us anything, it’s that the next six months will change more than the last six years. Stay tuned.

Timestamps
05:00 — Welcome back, Matt Nichols
05:10 — Six months later, the world looks different
05:35 — Commerce Ventures in 60 seconds
06:30 — What changed in 2025?
08:00 — Standards vs. infrastructure
10:00 — Retailers’ three priorities right now
12:40 — Static feeds → AI-centric feeds
15:00 — Reviews, Q&A, and proprietary data
17:30 — SKU-level identifiers
20:00 — API-first checkout vs. agentic scraping
22:30 — Fraud, agent authentication & whitelisting
24:00 — Payments are further ahead than commerce infrastructure
27:00 — What retailers are actually worried about
30:00 — Google’s role in accelerating the shift
32:00 — Vertical agents vs. horizontal giants
34:00 — Predictions for 2026 & beyond
38:00 — Final reflections

👉 Connect with Matt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewnichols/
👉 Learn more about Commerce Ventures: https://commerce.vc/

A Conversation with Luca Fiaschi of PyMC Labs: Synthetic Consumers & the Future of Product Testing

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with Luca to unpack a research paper that blends academic rigor with real-world implications:
“LLMs Reproduce Human Purchase Intent via Semantic Similarity licitation of Likert Ratings.”

The paper, co-authored with Colgate-Palmolive researchers, explores whether AI can accurately simulate human reactions to product concepts, enough to replace or accelerate traditional consumer panels, which are slow, expensive, and hard to scale.

This one goes deep, but in ways that any retail or AI leader should care about. Scot and Luca discuss:

Colgate’s Challenge: How to test product concepts faster and at scale.
Synthetic Consumers: AI models that react to products like human panels.
Accuracy Breakthrough: Reaching ~73–74% agreement with real consumers.
Fixing LLM Failure Modes: Why naive prompts don’t work, and what does.
Bayesian Reasoning: Adding uncertainty so AI stops being confidently wrong.
Smarter A/B Testing: Using AI to pre-screen ideas before running live experiments.
Digital Clones: Future consumers earning money by sharing preference data safely.
Simulated Populations: Matching real audiences for testing and predictions.

AI isn’t just helping brands write copy or generate images, it’s beginning to think like their customers. If synthetic consumers continue to evolve at this pace, product development, A/B testing, and personalization may look completely different in just a few years.

Timestamps:
03:00 — Luca’s background: Rocket Internet, HelloFresh, Lazada, Stitch Fix
08:00 — How PyMC Labs was founded & why Bayesian modeling matters
16:00 — Bayesian thinking explained in simple terms
19:00 — High-stakes decisions & why probabilistic reasoning matters
24:00 — Colgate’s challenge: testing product concepts at scale
26:00 — How synthetic consumer panels work
30:00 — Accuracy results: humans vs. AI (~73–74%)
32:00 — Why naive LLM prompting fails (“mode collapse”)
35:00 — How reasoning → scoring solves accuracy issues
38:00 — Example: synthetic consumers evaluating PyMC’s own website redesign
44:00 — How AI can pre-screen ideas for smarter A/B testing
48:00 — Where AI cannot replace causal testing
49:00 — Digital clones & monetizable consumer preferences
52:00 — Future benchmarks, new LLMs & evaluation methods

👉 Connect with Luca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lfiaschi/
👉 Learn more about PyMC Labs: https://www.pymc-labs.com
👉 Check out the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08338

#Retailgentic #AgenticCommerce #SyntheticConsumers #AIShopping #ProductTesting #CPGInnovation #GenerativeAI #BayesianModeling #Ecommerce #FutureOfRetail #DataScience #LLMs #AIResearch

Mike Edmonds Explains PayPal’s Agentic Roadmap & AI Checkout Future

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Retailgentic, host Scot sits down with Mike Edmonds, PayPal’s VP of Agentic Commerce & Commercial Growth, to unpack the massive pivot PayPal has made into the Agentic Commerce era, and what it means for retailers, brands, platforms, and developers.

Mike goes deep on:

PayPal’s Agentic Bet: Why PayPal is going all-in on Agentic Commerce
Merchant Anxiety, Explained: The real reason so many merchants are anxious about LLMs
Instant Checkout 2.0: Where PayPal sees Instant Checkout heading next
Wallets as Identity: Why wallet identity will matter more than ever
2030 Predictions: Mike’s bold predictions for shopping agents in 2030
Two-Track Future: A world split between autonomous commerce and luxury human-led experiences
Protocol Chaos Simplified: How PayPal plans to tame and unify an explosion of competing protocols
Merchant of Record Relief: The surprising emotional fear merchants have about disintermediation

As AI agents reshape discovery, checkout, and trust, PayPal is building the rails for the future of digital commerce.

Key Timestamps:
02:15 — Mike introduces his background.
04:45 — How Mike’s career path led directly into PayPal’s Agentic Commerce leadership role.
06:20 — What “VP of Agentic Commerce & Commercial Growth” really means at PayPal.
07:48 — The biggest lessons Mike learned leading AI strategy at Microsoft.
10:35 — What merchants are actually thinking about Agentic Commerce (the real pulse).
12:18 — Mike explains the off-surface vs on-surface Agentic Commerce model.
13:10 — Why merchants feel overwhelmed by LLMs, APIs, and protocol sprawl.
14:47 — PayPal’s role as the one-to-many connector across LLMs and platforms.
16:06 — What technical pieces merchants need in place to integrate Agentic checkout.
17:45 — How on-surface conversational agents can finally boost conversion rates.
19:30 — Why conversational checkout is the missing piece in Agentic shopping.
20:55 — What the Perplexity partnership enables for checkout, payments, and reach.
23:30 — How PayPal is powering ChatGPT Instant Checkout and expanding ACP.
26:12 — Why Agentic protocols are diverging, and how PayPal navigates the chaos.
28:30 — The emotional fear merchants have of LLMs.
30:05 — Mike’s 2030 prediction
31:40 — Why some categories will automate, while luxury experiences stay human.
33:10 — Multimodal will reshape shopping through voice, gestures, and identity.
35:00 — The top concerns merchants raise in every PayPal Agentic conversation.
37:05 — Where to find Mike and what PayPal has coming next.

Announcements & press releases related to the conversations:

Perplexity: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-05-14-Perplexity-Selects-PayPal-to-Power-Agentic-Commerce
Google (commerce agent for merchants: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/financial-services/introducing-an-agentic-commerce-solution-for-merchants-from-paypal-and-google-cloud
OpenAI: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-28-OpenAI-and-PayPal-Team-Up-to-Power-Instant-Checkout-and-Agentic-Commerce-in-ChatGPT
AP2: https://developer.paypal.com/community/blog/PayPal-Agent-Payments-Protocol/ and https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol
PayPal’s Agentic Commerce Services: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-28-PayPal-Launches-Agentic-Commerce-Services-to-Power-AI-Driven-Shopping

👉 Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/
👉 Learn more about PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/us/home

HUMAN Security’s Stu Solomon: Inside the Agentic Internet and the 1300% Surge in AI Traffic

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot talks with Stu Solomon, CEO of HUMAN Security, the company analyzing 20+ trillion digital interactions every week to detect bots, fraud, and now agentic AI behavior. Stu breaks down:

Why bots now exceed human traffic
The 1300% growth in agentic activity
How HUMAN identifies good vs. bad bots
The rise of agentic logins, navigation, and even checkouts
Why spoofing of ChatGPT and Perplexity traffic is exploding
What retailers need to know about letting AI agents crawl their sites
The coming world of agent-to-agent commerce

If you’re preparing for the future of retail, ad tech, AI commerce, or online security, this is essential listening.

Timestamps
02:20 — What HUMAN actually measures (bot vs human vs agentic)
03:40 — Stu’s background (military → Amazon → banking → VC → CEO)
06:40 — The logistics + retail connection
09:00 — How HUMAN works: media + enterprise security
11:00 — The digital journey from ad → login → checkout
12:11 — HUMAN at 20 trillion interactions/week
16:55 — Why HUMAN started publishing agentic data
17:50 — 1300% growth in agentic activity
18:30 — Machine traffic surpasses human traffic
19:40 — The diversification of generative AI traffic
20:30 — Agentic login + website navigation behavior
24:00 — How HUMAN distinguishes bot vs agent vs human
33:00 — The bad side: spoofed ChatGPT & Perplexity traffic
38:30 — Retailers blocking bots without realizing it
47:00 — The inevitability of agentic adoption
48:40 — The future: agent-to-agent transactions
49:30 — The end of 2FA hell?

👉 Connect with Stu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stu-solomon-733a217/
👉 Learn more about HUMAN: https://www.humansecurity.com/

Salesforce’s Nitin Mangtani on Agentic Commerce, ACP, and the Future of AI Shopping

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with one of the most influential product leaders in commerce technology: Nitin Mangtani, SVP & GM of Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Their relationship goes back almost two decades, intersecting at Google, during the rise of online shopping, and now again at the dawn of agentic commerce. Nitin shares his journey from supply chain analytics at i2 Technologies, to building Google’s earliest commerce products, to founding and scaling PredictSpring, and finally leading Salesforce’s reinvention of unified and agentic commerce. This conversation is packed with history, strategy, and forward-looking insights into where AI shopping agents are taking the industry.

Timestamps:

03:20 – Early career: i2 Technologies & supply chain beginnings
10:00 – Joining Google in 2006
13:30 – Launching Google Commerce Search & Site Search
16:40 – Froogle/Google Shopping goes from “fun project” to billion-dollar business
18:00 – Comparison engines, feed specs & early retail taxonomy challenges
20:15 – Canonicalization and why product data was Google’s first “AI problem”
22:40 – Leaving Google to start PredictSpring
24:20 – PredictSpring’s original vision: mobile commerce & no-code apps
26:05 – Pivoting PredictSpring: TAM realities & shifting to Point of Sale
29:00 – Competing with Shopify POS, Square & the white space in enterprise POS
31:30 – Startup lessons: pivots, risk, funding & an 11.5-year journey
34:45 – Salesforce approaches PredictSpring: acquisition story
38:00 – Meeting Marc Benioff & Salesforce’s leadership culture
41:00 – Becoming SVP/GM: unifying Commerce Cloud, POS, OMS & Payments
44:10 – Agentforce & the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with OpenAI & Stripe
47:10 – Discovery vs checkout: why syndicated checkout is harder
49:30 – Messaging commerce: WhatsApp, SMS & conversational transactions
51:30 – Full automation: replenishment, grocery & true agentic behavior
52:45 – Why commerce is strategically important to Salesforce

Agentic commerce isn’t just a channel change, it’s a full-stack rewrite of how discovery, decision-making, and checkout work. Nitin makes clear that the next wave won’t be about small UX improvements, but about systems that think, act, and transact on behalf of consumers and retailers alike. With leaders like Nitin driving Salesforce’s transformation, the future of unified and agentic commerce is arriving faster than expected.

👉 Connect with Nitin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/
👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

Inside PayOS with Jonathan McGowan: How Agentic Payments Will Power the AI Shopping Revolution

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 02:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Retailgentic, host Scot Wingo sits down with Johnathan McGowan, co-founder & CEO of PayOS, to discuss how AI agents will handle payments safely and compliantly.

From Visa and Mastercard partnerships to the first live Agentic token transaction, Johnathan explains how “day-one-ready” infrastructure will power the future of Agentic Commerce.

Timestamps:
01:56 — Meet Johnathan McGowan, co-founder of PayOS
04:00 — From Visa to PayOS: the founding story
06:40 — What Agentic Payments really mean
08:10 — Partnering with Visa & Mastercard
10:25 — “Day-one-ready” vs new payment rails
12:50 — What PayOS actually does
15:30 — Agent builders and early use cases
18:40 — Understanding “intent” in payments
21:50 — Future-proofing across protocols (AP2, ACP, etc.)
24:55 — How the first live Agentic transaction worked
29:50 — Why PCI compliance & trust matter
36:00 — The global scale of Agentic Commerce

As AI agents start making real-world transactions, companies like PayOS are making sure those payments are not just possible, but trusted, secure, and global from day one.

👉 Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnathanm/
👉 Learn more about the PayOS: https://www.linkedin.com/company/payos/

OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji: "How People Use ChatGPT" Deep Dive Discussion

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 02:00:00 -0800

OpenAI’s Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji joins Scot Wingo on the Retailgentic Podcast to unpack OpenAI's recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper "How People Use ChatGPT".

From asking vs. doing to AI-powered shopping behavior, this deep dive reveals how generative AI is transforming the economy and how soon “agentic” commerce will redefine online retail.

This episode is more than a window into OpenAI, it’s a look at the data shaping how humans and agents will interact, shop, and make decisions in the years ahead. If you care about where AI is really headed, this one’s not just worth your time, it’s required listening.

Timestamps:
02:00 – Meet Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI’s Chief Economist
06:00 – How the ChatGPT usage study began
10:30 – What surprised the team most
15:00 – Asking vs. Doing: the evolution of agentic behavior
19:00 – The viral “colored columns” chart and what it shows
22:00 – AI and the future of writing, learning, and work
26:00 – How Ronnie bought jeans with ChatGPT
28:00 – The 2.1% insight: early AI commerce signals
33:00 – Voice + vision = the next leap for agentic shopping
38:00 – The global view of AI adoption
42:00 – What’s next in OpenAI’s research
45:00 – Closing thoughts & how to follow Ronnie

👉 Connect with Ronnie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-ronnie-chatterji/
👉 Learn more about the paper we discuss: https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/

Caila Schwartz on Salesforce’s Holiday Forecast: Agentic Discovery, Loyalty, and “Discount Chicken”

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 01:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgentic, Salesforce’s Director of Strategy and Consumer Insights Caila Schwartz joins Scot Wingo to break down Salesforce’s 2024 Holiday Forecast, and how AI agents like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are transforming the path to purchase.

They cover:

How 21% of global holiday spend will be influenced by AI
Why discovery (not discounts) is this year’s theme
Why Baby Boomers are finally using ChatGPT for shopping
How Gen Z is bringing the mall back with AI in hand
The return of “Discount Chicken” and the Tuesday-after-Cyber-Monday surprise

Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome + Caila intro
01:00 – What Salesforce’s Consumer Insights team does
04:30 – Agentforce and AI momentum post-Dreamforce
07:00 – Holiday forecast: “Discovery” as the 2024 theme
08:00 – How Agentic tools are changing product search
09:45 – $263B in AI-influenced sales
12:00 – Gen Z, Baby Boomers, and agentic adoption
15:00 – Q3 data: growth, traffic, and product detail engagement
19:30 – LLM referrals vs social media conversions
22:00 – ChatGPT Checkout and embedded commerce
25:00 – AI in physical stores — 57% of shoppers use agents in-store
28:00 – Holiday sales forecast and discount trends
33:00 – The rise of “Discount Chicken”
38:00 – Loyalty consolidation and the price-sensitive consumer
42:00 – Gen Z’s love of in-store experiences
47:00 – The future of unified data and physical + digital retail
50:00 – Closing thoughts

👉 Connect with Manil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caila-schwartz/
👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

Manil Uppal on Solving Agentic Checkout: How CartAI Is Building the Execution Layer for AI Commerce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 01:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot Wingo talks with Manil Uppal, Founder & CEO of CartAI, about building the “execution layer” of agentic commerce, where AI agents don’t just recommend products, they buy them. From his early startups acquired by H-E-B and UPS to his vision for CartAI, Manil shares how his team is solving the hardest problem in agentic shopping: completing checkout seamlessly across any retailer.

Key Timestamps

00:02:00 – Manil’s background: from delivery startups to AI infrastructure
00:09:00 – The “aha” moment: from “Where to Buy” to “Go Buy It”
00:15:00 – The 3 layers of Agentic Commerce: Catalog, Payments, Checkout
00:20:00 – How CartAI executes merchant-native checkouts across platforms
00:26:00 – Why retailers need a whitelist for good agents
00:33:00 – Handling out-of-stocks, variants, and dynamic pricing
00:40:00 – Thoughts on ChatGPT’s new ACP standard
00:43:00 – Lessons from early food delivery startups for agentic commerce
00:46:00 – The future: vertical AI apps, expert agents, and commerce everywhere

Agentic commerce is evolving fast and CartAI is building the rails to make it work.

👉 Connect with Manil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maniluppal/
👉 Learn more about CartAI: https://www.cartai.ai
👉 Explore their substack: https://substack.com/@cartai

Turning the Tables: Kiri Masters Interviews Scot Wingo on Agentic Commerce & AI Shopping

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:00:00 -0700

In this special Retailgentic episode, guest host Kiri Masters turns the tables on our regular host, Scot Wingo (CEO, ReFiBuy). They unpack the next big retail revolution, Agentic Commerce, and what it means for shoppers, retailers, and brands as AI shopping agents like ChatGPT and Perplexity redefine discovery, loyalty, and checkout.

Scot shares the lessons behind ChannelAdvisor, Spiffy, and now ReFiBuy, plus why messy product catalogs, ad overload, and loyalty programs will determine who wins in the AI marketplace era.

⏱️ Key Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: Kiri turns the tables
02:15 – Scot’s early career & first startup
07:50 – Building ChannelAdvisor
14:30 – Lessons from going public
20:05 – Spiffy and the services economy
26:40 – Discovering AI → the spark for ReFiBuy
33:00 – What is Agentic Commerce?
38:20 – ChatGPT & Perplexity in the marketplace race
45:00 – The product catalog problem explained
51:00 – How ReFiBuy solves it with AI
55:20 – Retailers’ edge: loyalty, data, customer experience
59:00 – The next phase: marketplaces 2.0
1:02:00 – Close: The future of AI shopping

👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 Learn more about ReFiBuy: refibuy.ai

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
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Jason Nyus: President & GM at Shopware on Agentic Commerce, Open Ecosystems, and the Future of Checkout

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 07:55:00 -0700

In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot Wingo sits down with Jason Nyus, General Manager of North America at Shopware, a leading open-source e-commerce platform. Jason brings over 25 years of experience (20+ at Digital River) to unpack where e-commerce is heading, why Shopware is betting big on agentic commerce, and how the Agentic Commerce Alliance could shape the industry’s future.

Timestamps:
02:00 – Jason’s 25-year journey in e-commerce, from Digital River to Shopware
06:00 – The early days of app stores: Nokia, Blackberry, Microsoft
09:45 – Why Digital River pivoted and what commoditization taught him
13:00 – Why Shopware sees opportunity in mid-market and complex use cases
20:30 – Shopware’s scale: $23B processing volume, top 6 global commerce platform
26:00 – Introducing the Agentic Commerce Alliance: vision, openness, and independence
36:00 – Use cases for agentic commerce: competitive pricing, loyalty, and customer service
42:00 – Risks and opportunities for Shopify, Google, and Amazon in the agentic era
46:00 – Jason’s predictions: a billion-dollar brand without a website, 25% of e-commerce becoming agentic by 2030
Jason makes it clear: the future of commerce won’t be decided by one platform. Shopware’s vision of an open, agent-friendly ecosystem is a bold alternative to a closed, platform-controlled future. The Agentic Commerce Alliance could become one of the most important initiatives shaping AI-driven retail.

👉 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnyhus/
👉 Learn more about Shopware’s vision: shopware.com
👉 Explore the Agentic Commerce Alliance: agentic-commerce.org

Jordi Montes: Founder+CEO Simple Checkout, From Crypto to Agentic Payments

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 02:00:00 -0700

On this special Retailgentic episode, we sit down with Jordi Montes, CEO & co-founder of SimpleCheckout.ai, who officially launched today. Jordi shares his journey from Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to building a unified checkout and payment framework for AI agents. We dive into why agentic payments matter, what SimpleCheckout solves, and how it could reshape the future of online retail.

Timestamps:

00:01:55 – Jordi’s background: from TravelPerk to Lightning Network
00:05:30 – The “sci-fi moment” that inspired SimpleCheckout
00:12:00 – Why payments must evolve beyond the browser
00:18:00 – Mapping agentic commerce to the travel industry model
00:23:00 – Competing visions: SimpleCheckout vs. PayOS vs. Nacuda
00:31:00 – The role of personalization in agentic commerce
00:39:45 – Why SimpleCheckout is payment- and merchant-agnostic
00:43:30 – Looking ahead: the future of agent-to-agent payments

SimpleCheckout’s launch marks a turning point in how AI agents will transact. As agentic commerce takes hold, Jordi’s vision of a universal, flexible checkout protocol could define the rails of the next decade.

Checkout their substack announcement: https://simplecheckout.substack.com/p/agentic-commerce-made-simple

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Melissa Minkow on Agentic Commerce, Loyalty, Consumer Habits, and Retail’s Future

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot Wingo sits down with Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategies & Insights at CI&T. Melissa shares her perspective on consumer behavior, why ingrained shopping habits stick, and how agentic commerce will shape the future of retail.

We cover:
- Why consumer habits are so hard to change, even in grocery shopping
- Exclusive sneak peek: fresh survey data showing 75% of consumers now use AI in their path to purchase
- How agentic commerce could transform loyalty, pricing, and even group buying
- Lessons from Target Canada and why back-office AI matters more than flashy consumer tools
- Why TikTok might be the blueprint for agentic retail experiences

Retail is changing fast and the agentic future is already here. Subscribe for more conversations, insights, and data shaping the next chapter of commerce.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Consumers are routinized: why habits stick
01:08 – Introducing the Retailgenic Podcast
02:15 – Guest intro: Melissa Minco of CI&T
04:06 – Melissa’s background: from Anthropologie to Target to CI&T
08:52 – Target Canada lessons & retail systems breakdown
12:00 – Apps vs. consumers: adoption, trust, and pushback
15:00 – Agentic commerce: inside vs. outside view
19:00 – Will consumers build their own shopping agents?
23:00 – Exclusive data: 75% of consumers now use AI in their path to purchase
28:00 – Sponsored GEO and consumer trust
33:00 – Agent strategies: retailer, consumer, and third-party
36:00 – Best practices: getting your “back office” right first
40:00 – Checkouts, marketplaces, and the future of digital retail
46:00 – Loyalty in the agentic era: Gen Z, UK vs. US, and discounts
50:00 – Group buying, negotiation, and dynamic pricing
56:00 – Reading the tea leaves: websites, zero-click, and consumer control
01:00:00 – Melissa’s “personal agents” vision of the future
01:05:00 – TikTok as a model for agentic commerce
01:08:00 – Wrap-up & closing thoughts

Report drops at CI&T website soon: https://ciandt.com/us/en-us

From Columbia to Custom AI, an Agentic Commerce Deep Dive | Amine Allouah, My Custom AI

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 02:00:00 -0700

Dr. Amine Allouah completed his PhD at Columbia Business School, specializing in algorithmic game theory and optimization in multi-agent systems. After leading applied science work at Meta across ads, notifications, and marketplace teams, he co-founded My Custom AI to help enterprises deploy tailored AI solutions. His work bridges deep theory with practical applications, shaping how businesses think about LLMs, agents, and the economics of AI.

This week on Retailgentic, we’re joined by Dr. Amine, co-founder of My Custom AI and one of the sharpest minds at the intersection of AI, economics, and retail. In this conversation, we dig deep into:

Amine’s journey: École Polytechnique → Columbia → Meta → entrepreneurship
What algorithmic game theory means for real-world AI systems
Why enterprises need custom models for accuracy, privacy, and cost savings
The ACES Framework: how agents really “shop” online
Surprising findings: agents ignore ads, but positioning still matters
Why MCP isn’t enough, and what’s next for protocols
Implications for retailers, brands, and the future of retail media

If you’ve ever wondered how agents will reshape retail and what brands need to do right now to prepare, this episode will give you a front-row seat to the future of agentic commerce.

Highlights/Timestamps ⏱️
0:00 – How agents drive omnichannel growth beyond e-commerce
5:00 – Meet guest Amine Allouah: from École Polytechnique to Columbia PhD
9:30 – Game theory, algorithm design, and AI: lessons from his PhD
13:45 – From Meta AI researcher to startup founder: the origin of My Custom AI
18:10 – What My Custom AI does: feasibility studies, custom model training & workshops
23:25 – Why retailers sometimes need their own LLMs: accuracy, privacy & cost savings
29:20 – Beyond LLaMA: multimodal models, recommendation systems, and custom architectures
34:05 – The ACES Framework: building a sandbox to study agent shopping
39:16 – Optimizations around pricing, loyalty & group buying
39:24 – Why group buying startups have struggled
39:35 – Aligning buyer and seller agents for better outcomes
44:15 – Agent behavior insights: Claude and the “ergonomic” keyword example
48:50 – The case for seller-side agents and real-time PDP updates
51:31 – Amazon is the first company to adopt the ACES framework
55:00 – Retail media networks in an agent world: real-time “agentic ads”
58:00 – Will websites die? The future of browsing, checkouts & merchant centers
1:01:00 – Closing thoughts + where to find Amine & the ACES paper

The Predictive Enterprise and the Future of Agentic Commerce | Kasey Lobaugh, C Futurist Consumer Industry @ Deloitte

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgentic, Deloitte’s Chief Futurist Kasey Lobaugh joins us to explore the future of agentic commerce. Kasey has spent nearly three decades advising global retailers, brands, and manufacturers. He launched Deloitte Digital, now a multibillion-dollar business, and today leads Deloitte’s Future of the Consumer Industry platform. Known for coining the “great bifurcation” of consumers, Kasey helps executives anticipate disruptive forces and chart strategy amid seismic change.

Scot and Kasey unpack the forces reshaping commerce and the role of AI:

Six forces shaping the consumer industry
The great bifurcation of value vs. convenience shoppers
Rise of predictive enterprises
Fragmentation and shifting demographics
Agentic AI and digital services growth
Declining Google traffic and new discovery models
Why “hopping the cost curve” may be essential

Highlights

00:02:00 – Meet Kasey Lobaugh, Deloitte’s Chief Futurist for the consumer industry
00:05:00 – The six forces shaping the future: consumer, culture, tech, industry, climate, and politics
00:10:30 – Why growth feels constrained: demographics, barriers to entry, and shifting spend
00:15:00 – The new bifurcation: asset owners vs. providers of labor
00:20:00 – From mass retail to hyper-relevance powered by AI
00:23:00 – The predictive enterprise: moving beyond insights to compute-led foresight
00:25:30 – Surprising predictive attributes: why buying a cat can forecast retail behavior
00:29:30 – Women and wealth: a dramatic shift by 2030
00:34:00 – The decline of search and rise of GenAI discovery
00:40:00 – Retailers in the age of ChatGPT checkout
00:46:00 – AI isn’t blockchain or VR: why adoption curves look different
00:50:00 – Creativity unlocked: from AI-generated music to new consumer products
00:54:00 – Hopping cost curves: why efficiency alone won’t win the AI era
00:57:00 – Closing thoughts: racing to abundance, not the bottom

Agentic Commerce, AI Shopping, and the End of the Funnel | Andrea Leigh, Allume Group

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 02:00:00 -0700

What happens when the marketing funnel collapses and AI takes over discovery? Scot Wingo talks with Andrea Leigh, Amazon veteran and CEO of Allume Group, about the latest Allume Insider Report (AIR).

We cover:
• How ~60% of shoppers now use AI for product research
• “Value” as price and purpose (Gen Z, resale, circular)
• Social commerce’s rise and the blur between entertainment & shopping
• Why D2C sites are crucial for AI readability
• The shaky future of retail media networks and SEO

Andrea pulls back the curtain on how AI, value, and entertainment are rewriting the rules of commerce. This conversation is a roadmap for brands preparing for the collapse of search and the rise of agentic shopping.

⏱️ Time Stamps
01:41 – Guest intro: Andrea Leigh, Amazon alum & CEO of Allume Group.
03:18 – Andrea’s Amazon career and path to founding Allume Group.
06:14 – Amazon negotiations today: bots, automation, and leverage.
06:59 – Tariffs: who pays and why consumers often shoulder it.
08:01 – The origins of the Allume Insider Report (AIR).
11:10 – Three trends shaping commerce: AI help, value, and fun.
12:02 – 60% of shoppers already use AI for product discovery.
15:16 – Gen Z starts searches on TikTok, not Amazon.
19:29 – ChatGPT Checkout: affiliate or true marketplace?
26:11 – Value redefined: bargain-hunting, private label, and resale on the rise.
31:12 – Social commerce explodes: TikTok Shops headed for $17B.
32:47 – “Amazon solved buying but killed shopping.”
40:05 – D2C sites as AI-readable “source of truth.”
46:22 – Retail media and SEO industries under pressure from AI.
53:20 – Amazon’s Rufus and the fight to compete with LLMs.
52:55 – Closing thoughts + download the free AIR report.

AI Shopping Agents & the Future of Commerce | Alex Rampell, Andreessen Horowitz

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 02:00:00 -0700

What happens when more than half of online shopping traffic comes from AI agents, not humans?

In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot Wingo sits down with Alex Rampell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, to unpack the seismic shift happening at the intersection of AI, commerce, and payments.

We cover:

Is Google really screwed? (and why AI threatens its business model)
The future of agentic commerce & attribution wars
Lessons from TrialPay, Affirm, and affiliate marketing
How platforms like ChatGPT could become checkout destinations
Why “optimization” may be the killer feature of AI shopping agents

If you’re in e-commerce, retail, fintech, or just want to know how AI will change the way we buy and sell, this is a must-listen.

⏱️ Time Stamps
04:45 – Alex’s early days: shareware & credit card processing

06:26 – TrialPay, affiliates & the Netflix-for-shareware idea

08:45 – Founding Affirm & moving into venture at a16z

09:55 – The “apps practice” and where value accrues (infra vs. apps)

10:57 – “Is Google Screwed?” background & themes

13:02 – Commerce attribution & affiliate marketing evolution

15:04 – Impulse vs. highly considered purchases in AI era

18:27 – Optimization: why AI wins on time vs. money tradeoff

21:00 – Reviews, shill content, and trust problems

23:50 – Hosted checkout: could ChatGPT become a marketplace?

26:14 – Will Apple jump into AI commerce?

28:35 – Coupon codes, group buying, and negotiation by agents

30:04 – How commerce could be “rewired” by AI platforms

31:25 – Closing thoughts & what’s next

The Psychology of AI in Commerce: Agentic Shopping and Consumer Behavior | Luca Cian, Marketing Professor

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 02:00:00 -0700

What happens when consumers start trusting AI agents more than friends for shopping advice? On this episode of Retailgentic, we welcome Professor Luca Cian from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Luca brings a unique perspective as a psychologist turned marketing scholar whose research spans visual persuasion, AI adoption, and consumer trust. We dive deep into how shoppers perceive AI in utilitarian vs. hedonic purchases, why trust in AI depends on “augmented decision-making,” and how brands should prepare for an AI-first retail future.

From the paradox of choice to the emerging world of “GenAI Engine Optimization (GEO),” this conversation is packed with insights on how AI is rewriting the rules of marketing, loyalty, and consumer psychology.

Tune in for:

The psychology of trust in AI: why we accept AI for practical tasks but resist it in creative/hedonic domains
The paradox of choice and how AI alleviates decision fatigue
How brands can adapt to the rise of agentic commerce and GEO (GenAI Engine Optimization)
Future of loyalty programs when shopping decisions are mediated by AI agents

🕒 Timestamps:
00:02:05 — Guest intro: Luca Cion, UVA Darden professor, studies consumer psychology and AI in marketing.

00:09:36 — Early AI research with GPT-3 preview; skepticism then rapid shift in perception.

00:17:12 — Survey: 60% trust AI purchase suggestions more than friends → ties to “paradox of choice.”

00:21:01 — Word-of-Machine Effect: AI trusted for utilitarian products, humans preferred for hedonic ones.

00:28:53 — Trust grows when AI is augmented by humans and shows transparency (black box effect reduced).

00:36:11 — AI Mistake Generalization: consumers forgive humans but not AI; one AI error erodes trust broadly.

00:46:06 — Loyalty as a decision shortcut; in the AI age, human touch and anthropomorphism become vital.

00:50:40 — People blame AI less than humans for unfair treatment (e.g., firing decisions).

00:53:32 — Executive MBA discussions: AI displacing middle management but creating future opportunities.

00:58:00 — Managers should lead with human strategic vision, then use AI/data to validate decisions.

Retail Media’s Future, Agentic Shopping, and the AI Disruption Ahead | Kiri Masters, Retail Media Industry Analyst

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 01:00:00 -0700

Kiri Masters, founder of Bobsled Marketing and Retail Media Breakfast Club, joins the Retailgentic Podcast to unpack the future of retail media. We cover the economic drivers of onsite and offsite ads, why loyalty programs could be a hidden moat in the age of AI, and how agentic shopping may challenge even the biggest players.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro & Welcome
01:30 – Kiri’s path from banking to launching Bobsled Marketing
06:40 – Selling the agency and life after acquisition
11:05 – The launch of Retail Media Breakfast Club
14:20 – Economic foundations of retail media (onsite, offsite, trade)
20:55 – The threat of agentic shopping to retail media networks
28:15 – Walmart vs. Amazon: Two strategies for AI agents
34:00 – Loyalty programs as a competitive advantage
38:45 – The future of retail media in an AI-driven world
43:20 – Where to find Kiri Masters & Retail Media Breakfast Club

AI-Native Brands, Agentic Commerce, and the Future of Retail | Karl Haller, IBM

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 01:00:00 -0700

In this episode of the Retailgentic podcast, we sit down with Karl Haller, Partner at IBM Consulting and leader of their Consumer Industry Center of Competency. Karl brings deep insight into the retail, CPG, and fashion sectors, sharing how AI is reshaping enterprise operations, from store-level automation to the rise of agentic shopping and AI-native brands.

We explore:

How IBM uses AI internally to save billions
The future of AI-native startups with 5x leaner orgs
What retailers need to know about agent-based shopping
How personalization and dynamic pricing could transform the consumer experience

📍 Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro & Karl’s background
01:10 – IBM's early AI work and internal cost savings
05:00 – AI’s shift from hype to workflow transformation
07:15 – Retail use cases: contact centers, operations, and automation
10:55 – The agentic shopping shift: consumers vs. retailers
16:00 – Why gift-giving may tip agentic shopping into the mainstream
18:30 – ChatGPT’s hosted checkout and new marketplace dynamics
22:00 – The rise of AI-native brands and single-person unicorns
30:00 – Store-level orchestration and event-triggered workflows
36:00 – Personalization in stores—like having Anna Wintour’s whisperer
39:00 – Dynamic pricing and loyalty-based personalization
44:00 – Final thoughts: the slow shift until the tipping point hits

Amazon's Secret Plan to Beat Walmart with AI Vans & Micro-Fulfillment | Interview with Brittain Ladd

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 12:46:56 -0700

Amazon is quietly building the future of grocery and retail logistics and former Amazon exec Brittain Ladd is here to break it all down.

In this exclusive conversation, Brittain reveals never-before-shared insights into Amazon's local vending machines (LVMs), robot-powered Rivian vans, and the AI-driven strategy to dethrone Walmart in grocery. He also discusses Amazon's ambitions in third-party logistics and why they might one day buy the USPS.

Whether you're into e-commerce, logistics, or the future of automation, this is an episode you don't want to miss.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro & Brittain Ladd background
2:00 – Instacart talent exodus and Walmart's poaching
3:00 – Amazon’s $4B rural delivery investment
4:45 – Amazon’s grocery strategy gap vs. Walmart
6:30 – Micro-fulfillment & why Amazon is still behind
8:00 – Whole Foods as a broken link in Amazon’s chain
10:00 – Local Vending Machines (LVMs): Amazon's secret weapon
13:00 – Robotized Rivian delivery vans explained
16:30 – Printer cartridge model for replenishing vans
18:30 – AI-powered inventory prediction by ZIP code
21:00 – Amazon’s long-term vision to beat Walmart
23:00 – Humanoid robots & autonomous delivery
26:00 – Amazon as the next FedEx/UPS
29:00 – Will Amazon buy the USPS?

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Comet in Action: The Future of AI Shopping Agents | Retailgenic Live Demo

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Missed the Retailgenic livestream? We’ve got you covered. In this special replay, Scott Wingo walks you through the rise of agentic browsers, gives a full demo of Perplexity’s new browser Comet, and explores how tools like Comet are transforming shopping as we know it. From multi-tab research to automatic cart additions and product comparisons, this is your front-row seat to the next generation of AI-driven commerce.

Highlights include:

What makes agentic browsing different from traditional search
How Comet leverages your local context to automate tasks
A live showdown of Comet vs. Amazon, Target, and Walmart
A surprise appearance by Alexa 2.0

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Generous: The AI Gifting Assistant Changing How We Shop | Kyle Montgomery, CEO @ Generous

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 02:00:00 -0700

Kyle Montgomery, founder of Generous, joins Retailgenic to talk about building an AI-powered gifting agent that actually feels human. From his background in e-commerce to the "20 nieces and nephews" moment that sparked his startup journey, Kyle unpacks what it takes to build an agentic marketplace and why gifting is the perfect place to start.

⏱️ Key Timestamps:

Timestamps:
00:00 – Hands on the wheel: what autonomy in gifting looks like
02:05 – Meet Kyle Montgomery, founder of Generous
04:00 – Kyle’s background: From Demandware to Estound Digital
06:00 – What sparked the idea for Generous? (Hint: 20 nieces + no app)
11:00 – Generous: What it is and who it's for
13:00 – Contact syncing, user onboarding, and AI-powered suggestions
18:00 – No search bar?! The power of chat-first shopping
22:00 – Agentic checkout and payment flow
27:00 – The humanity of gifting—why agents shouldn’t replace people
30:00 – What happens when brands no longer need websites?
34:00 – Are agencies ready for the agentic future?
38:00 – Kyle’s thoughts on Scott’s 5 Levels of Agentic Commerce
41:00 – Where to sign up + what’s next for Generous

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

AI Agents That Shop for You? Nekuda Is Building the Future of Payments | Ayal Karmi, CEO @ Nekuda

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 04:00:00 -0700

Can your AI assistant really shop for you? What happens when the “Buy Now” button isn’t clicked by a person? In this episode, Nekuda CEO Ayal Karmi explains how his company is rethinking payments for a world where autonomous agents act on our behalf.

We talk about:
• The lightbulb moment from a failed pizza-ordering agent
• Why authorization (not just authentication) is the future
• Real-world agent examples: fashion stylists, car modders
• Competing (and not competing) with Stripe & PayPal
• Raising a seed round led by Madrona, with Visa & Amex on board

🔗 Visit Nekuda: https://nekuda.ai
🧠 Read their Substack: https://nekuda.substack.com

⏱️ Key Timestamps:

00:35 – Ayal’s background in payments, AI, and crypto
02:30 – The failed pizza-ordering agent that sparked Nekuda
05:00 – The shift from AI-enhanced search to full agentic checkout
08:10 – Early product pivots and the importance of intent in transactions
12:00 – Who actually uses Nekuda’s tech: agent builders
18:30 – Real-world agentic use cases: stylists, mechanics, and more
21:00 – How their Substack brought in Visa & Amex as investors
26:00 – Competing with incumbents like Stripe & PayPal
34:45 – Will websites even exist in 2030?

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Agentic Shopping, Retail Data, & AI's Future | Ananda Chakravarty, VP Research @ IDC Retail Insights

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:01:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgenic, Scot Wingo welcomes Ananda Chakravarty, VP of Research at IDC’s Retail Insights Group. Ananda shares his decades of retail and technology experience spanning Monster, Staples, Oracle, Diebold Nixdorf, and Forrester to help break down:

The real definition of Agentic AI
How retailers must prepare their data and sites for AI agents
Why product discovery is ripe for AI-driven transformation
The massive implications for pricing, loyalty, personalization, and retail media
How agent-to-agent commerce may soon reshape buying behavior entirely

This is a must-listen for anyone thinking about the future of retail, commerce, and AI.

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Highlights:
00:02:15 Ananda explains his IDC report on agentic AI & product discovery
00:05:00 His career journey: engineering to business to retail tech
00:10:45 Early e-commerce work at Monster, Staples, Talbots
00:26:00 Deep dive into agentic AI orchestration & multi-agent workflows
00:36:00 What retailers should do today to prep for AI agents
00:41:00 How pricing, loyalty, and personalization will change
00:44:00 Agents negotiating with agents (agent-to-agent commerce)
00:48:00 The rapid acceleration of agentic traffic vs human traffic
00:49:00 Where to follow Ananda's work

Why the Next Billion-Dollar Brand Won’t Have a Website | Roy Rubin, Entrepreneur and Investor

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgenic, host Scot Wingo sits down with Roy Rubin, co-founder of Magento and General Partner at R-Squared Ventures, to explore the future of e-commerce in an AI-driven world.

Roy shares why he believes the next billion-dollar DTC brand won’t even need a website, what agentic shopping means for the future of retail, and how platforms like Shopify and Amazon may get disrupted next.

We also dive into:

The founding story and evolution of Magento
What went wrong (and right) during its acquisition by eBay and later Adobe
His prediction that AI agents will replace traditional commerce UIs
The good, bad, and ugly of agentic platforms like Perplexity

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Notable Timestamps:

00:01:02 — What is Retailgenic and why now?
00:02:11 — Meet Roy Rubin: Magento founder, now VC
00:04:43 — The billion-dollar brand with no website?
00:06:07 — Origin story: How Magento was born
00:13:03 — PayPal's early investment & eBay’s acquisition
00:27:12 — Roy’s VC firm and investment thesis
00:40:00 — Agentic shopping and future of AI commerce
00:44:46 — Social commerce & influencer-powered retail
00:47:00 — Virtual influencers, LLMs, and the closed web?

Agentic Commerce, AI Checkout, and the Future of Retail | Matt Nichols, Commerce Ventures

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgenic, host Scot Wingo sits down with Matt Nichols, General Partner at Commerce Ventures, to unpack the future of agentic commerce, the evolving role of AI shopping agents, and the new infrastructure needed to support them.

Matt shares:

- Why enriched product catalogs will power LLM-driven shopping
- How AI-native checkout layers could disrupt traditional eCommerce
- What retailers and marketplaces must decide about exposing data to AI platforms
- Insights into Commerce Ventures’ investment thesis and portfolio companies like Kevel, Portless, and Optiversal

From personalized retail media to tokenized payments and stablecoins, this wide-ranging conversation explores the critical infrastructure needed for a future where AI, not humans, drive most online shopping.

🔔 Subscribe for more insights at the intersection of retail, eCommerce, and AI

⏱ Notable Timestamps:

00:01:56 – Guest intro: Matt Nichols, General Partner at Commerce Ventures
00:04:50 – From VC to operator: Lessons from running a jewelry eCommerce brand
00:06:00 – How SEO and dynamic product creation powered growth
00:10:38 – How Commerce Ventures partners with strategic LPs
00:14:00 – Unique investment model: small first check, large follow-on
00:19:15 – Thematic investment areas: low-inventory retail, agentic payments, and AI-powered email
00:25:56 – Agentic product catalogs: new expectations for PDP data
00:28:00 – Why we need a Shopify for AI-driven commerce
00:30:00 – Mastercard’s agentic wallet concept explained
00:34:00 – How retailers can create compelling AI on-site experiences
00:39:00 – Pricing wars: Will agentic shopping force new price structures?
00:44:00 – Why eCommerce growth has plateaued (and what might reignite it)
00:49:00 – Ads in AI overviews: The next monetization challenge for Google

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Retail Media, GenAI & Agentic AI Shopping | Sucharita Kodali, Forrester

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Scot Wingo is joined by Forrester retail analyst Sucharita Kodali to dive into the emerging world of agentic shopping and the growing influence of generative AI in commerce. They cover:

- The explosion of retail media networks
- Why marketplaces are making a comeback
- OpenAI’s retail ambitions (and that Instacart CEO hire)
- GenAI adoption across retail use cases
- The rising threat to Google from TikTok and AI search
- What’s actually agentic vs. “faugentic”

⏱ Notable Timestamps:

00:06 – What is Retailgenic and what’s at stake in AI shopping
03:00 – Why retail media networks exploded post-COVID
07:30 – Instacart’s ad business & the OpenAI CEO move
10:00 – How big retailers are actually using GenAI today
14:00 – Is Google search under threat from ChatGPT, TikTok & Perplexity?
20:00 – Agentic shopping: hype vs. reality
26:00 – Could AI replace ticket brokers and influence high-demand shopping?
31:00 – The power of TikTok shopping and influencer-led discovery
33:00 – Closing thoughts on what’s truly “agentic” vs. faugentic

👉 Subscribe for more deep dives into the AI commerce revolution: https://www.retailgentic.com
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

How AI Agents Are Already Transforming Retail | Michelle Grant, Salesforce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot Wingo is joined by Michelle Grant, Director of Strategy & Insights for Retail and Consumer Goods at Salesforce. Michelle brings powerful insights from Salesforce’s massive retail data sets, surveys, and first-hand industry experience.

They dive deep into:

🧠 How Gen Z is driving the adoption of AI shopping agents
📊 Data from Salesforce’s Connected Shoppers Report
🤖 Where AI agents are showing up in real-world retail—from customer service to marketing and inventory
📈 What brands and retailers must do to stay relevant in the agentic future
💬 Why websites aren’t going away—but will need to evolve fast

If you want to understand the real-world impact of generative and agentic AI in commerce, this episode is a must-watch.

0:00 - Intro and Michelle’s background
2:00 - What Michelle does at Salesforce
5:45 - Salesforce’s data sources: Commerce Cloud + surveys
8:00 - GenAI traffic trends (Q1 2025 data)
10:30 - AI agent traffic from ChatGPT & Gemini
12:00 - Social vs. search vs. agentic behavior
14:10 - Connected Shoppers Report overview
15:00 - Gen Z adoption of AI agents
18:20 - What consumers want AI agents to do (customer service, returns, loyalty)
22:00 - Retailer adoption of agentic tools
26:00 - The future of retail websites
30:00 - Hyper-personalization and AI memory
35:00 - Final thoughts on retail strategy in the AI era

📰 Make sure to subscribe to the Retailgentic Substack: https://www.retailgentic.com
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

The Future of AI Shopping Agents: Welcome to Retailgentic

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Thu, 29 May 2025 04:00:00 -0700

Welcome to the very first episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, your guide to the fast-emerging world where AI agents meet retail and e-commerce.

In this foundational episode, host Scot Wingo lays out:

Why AI shopping agents may be even more disruptive than marketplaces
What “agentic commerce” actually means (and what doesn’t count)
Who the major players are today — and who’s coming next
The three phases of the shopping journey: Research → Find → Buy
What brands and retailers need to consider: Embrace or block?
The emerging payment protocols and agentic frameworks
Key predictions about Apple, Meta, Stripe, and the Chinese players
Why loyalty, personalization, and strategy are all about to be rewritten

Whether you’re a retailer, brand exec, investor, or just AI-curious, this episode sets the stage for everything to come.

📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Retailgentic Trailer: AI Shopping, Retail, and the Future of Ecommerce

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst — Tue, 27 May 2025 09:35:33 -0700

Welcome to Retailgentic, the podcast where we explore the fast-evolving intersection of retail, ecommerce, and Agentic AI, what we call Retailgentic.

Hosted by Scot Wingo, this show is your partner in navigating a future where AI agents shop on behalf of humans, reshaping everything from payments and checkout to customer loyalty and digital advertising.

In this trailer, we introduce the mission, stakes, and big questions ahead. If you’re a brand, retailer, or vendor looking to stay ahead of the curve, you’re in the right place.

🎧 Subscribe now and get ready to rethink retail as we know it.