For stores in downtown shopping districts and suburban strip malls, AI shopping could be an opportunity to play to a merchant’s strengths. Agentic commerce — the concept of AI agents shopping for humans — is a hot topic, in part because of commercial opportunity amid uncontrollable uncertainty.

Shopping Experience

“Agentic commerce is accelerating a bifurcation we’re already seeing,” said Andrew Stern, CEO and co-founder of Quilt Software, which makes operational tools for independent retailers.

Each day, shoppers create enormous amounts of data about themselves, their habits, and their preferences. As a result, supply chains (if leveraged properly) can virtually “talk” to retailers, manufacturers, and shippers.

But none of that data becomes actionable if retailers and their partners can’t get that data to tell a meaningful story. This research aims to find out how well retailers – and their trading partners – are able to convert this data into insight.

Why do buyers stick with certain brands? It’s simple: they find ongoing value at a price they are willing to pay. Yet, that’s not how many marketers are continuing to manage their loyalty programs. Instead, they’re stuck in a loop, banking on rewards points and mediocre discounts that customers often forget about. Loyalty programs today are missing the mark, becoming stale and ineffective due to a failure to grasp what truly drives loyalty: a consistently fulfilled brand promise within a unified customer experience that makes it easy to make a purchase or and targeted loyalty benefits that solve a problem.

E-commerce software provider Shopify is bullish on AI-powered shopping agents, citing AI as an “incredible tool” to enable more entrepreneurs and calling it the “biggest shift in technology since the internet” during its third-quarter earnings call. The company, which partnered with ChatGPT maker OpenAI in September, reported that traffic from AI tools to its online stores is up 7x since January of this year, and purchases attributed to AI-powered search have increased by 11x.

Marketplaces have become the go-to way for retailers to quickly expand their assortment in a low-risk way. And Ulta wants in. The cosmetics retail chain recently launched UB Marketplace not to expand the assortment of its core offering, but to test products in adjacent categories, such as grooming, wellness, pro tools and global beauty, said James Lang, Vice President of Marketplace at Ulta.

“We like to think of this as the second floor to our digital store,” Lang said. “These brands, these categories that we’re launching are really things that you would expect to see, and if we had more floor space, you would naturally see these brands in our stores.”

What’s really critical for businesses to keep in mind is that it has never been truer that a customer’s best experience with any brand anywhere sets the bar for their next experience - including their next experience with you. So, how do we, regardless of industry, meet and exceed those expectations?

This article, inspired by insights shared during a recent webinar, explores that question by addressing three critical aspects of building customer trust and loyalty:

The most impactful retail tech developments this year aren’t flashy upgrades or abstract promises. They’re tools grounded in day-to-day problems: peak-hour chaos, employee safety, hidden losses, and inconsistent decision-making. Retail technology in 2025 is less about flash and more about function. The newest tools don’t just look smart but actually respond to real pressure points inside stores like inventory delays, staffing issues, fraud risks, and safety concerns.

Payment technology provider Worldpay is now supporting OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). As the company noted in a news release Wednesday (Oct. 29), this is an open standard for artificial intelligence (AI) commerce allowing AI agents, people and businesses to work together on purchases.

With ACP, the release added, U.S. users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT will be able to shop directly from participating Worldpay merchants using Instant Checkout.