What: The rapid adoption of agentic commerce is shifting retail power from traditional websites to AI platforms, forcing brands to rethink digital strategies and customer engagement.

Why it is important: Retailers who fail to engage with AI platforms risk losing visibility, valuable data, and direct customer relationships to new digital gatekeepers.

Agentic commerce, driven by generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, is rapidly transforming the retail landscape by enabling consumers to discover and purchase products directly within conversational interfaces. Major retailers such as Walmart, Etsy, Shopify, and PayPal are integrating their offerings into these AI-powered chatbots, fundamentally altering the traditional path to purchase. This shift is attracting significant financial interest, with retail site traffic from AI browsers surging and McKinsey projecting agentic AI could drive up to $5 trillion in global retail revenue by 2030. However, the move to AI-mediated shopping channels presents new risks for retailers, including diminished opportunities for impulse purchases, loss of valuable consumer data, and the emergence of AI platforms as powerful new gatekeepers. As AI platforms increasingly control brand visibility and customer access, retailers must adapt their digital strategies to maintain relevance, optimize for AI-driven discovery, and safeguard direct relationships with their customers in an evolving answer economy. 

IADS Notes: The rapid rise of agentic commerce—where AI platforms like ChatGPT mediate product discovery, purchase, and brand visibility—is fundamentally reshaping the retail landscape. As highlighted by Modern Retail (August–September 2025), the integration of instant checkout within ChatGPT marks a pivotal shift, transforming AI from a research tool into a direct sales channel and raising concerns about market fairness and data access for smaller merchants. Inside Retail (September–October 2025) and Journal du Net (September 2025) confirm that AI-driven commerce is outpacing retailer readiness, with algorithms now controlling brand visibility and requiring brands to optimize for generative engine optimization and machine readability. Forbes (September 2025) and BoF (January 2025) emphasize that the explosive growth of AI-driven shopping is forcing retailers to recalibrate their digital strategies, as traditional marketing and loyalty tactics lose effectiveness. The convergence of major payment providers and AI platforms, as seen in PayPal’s and Walmart’s partnerships with OpenAI (Techcrunch, October 2025; Retail Dive, October 2025), is democratizing advanced commerce technologies but also intensifying competition and shifting power away from traditional retailers. The Robin Report (August 2025) and BCG (September 2025) further highlight the urgent need for robust cybersecurity, transparency, and responsible AI governance as agentic commerce becomes the new standard. Collectively, these developments signal a fundamental reconfiguration of retail, where success depends on adapting to AI-driven environments and maintaining relevance in the answer economy.

AI is a double edge sword for retailers