Winning the agentic shelf

<h2><b><span class="h6">Why the future of commerce depends on trust, not just technology.</span></b></h2>

<p>By 2030, consumers who embrace AI will account for up to 55% of all consumer purchasing activity, <a href="https://www.cognizant.com/us/en/aem-i/new-minds-new-markets-ai-customer-experience" target="_blank">our research shows</a>, whether via intelligent checkout experiences, autonomous shopping agents or other AI-enabled capabilities.</p>
<p>The agentic shelf is the new layer of commerce, where AI systems increasingly determine which products are discovered, recommended and ultimately purchased. As AI becomes a primary gateway to products and services, brands must rethink <a href="https://www.cognizant.com/us/en/insights/insights-blog/ai-brand-visibility-discovery-and-cx-design" target="_blank">how they maintain visibility and influence in AI-driven experiences</a>.</p>
<p>But as brands and retailers race to optimize for an agentic future, they shouldn’t lose sight of one important fact: AI agents don't replace consumers—they represent them.</p>
<p>Behind every <a href="https://www.cognizant.com/us/en/insights/insights-blog/ai-agents-for-cx" target="_blank">AI-powered search</a>, comparison and purchase is a person with preferences, emotions and expectations. The mechanics of the shopping experience may be changing quickly, but the underlying human needs—relevance, confidence, convenience and trust— remain.`</p>
<p>For brands and retailers, winning in this new reality doesn’t just come down to reaching agents but also continuing to create experiences that resonate with people. To do that, brands and retailers must connect every AI investment to the human experience. This means technology must be paired with trust. AI actions must be matched with accountability. And better data must be accompanied by stronger collaboration.</p>
<p>Here we explore these three shifts and how they will determine the leaders of the agentic shelf.</p>
<h4><span class="h5"><span class="text-bold-italic">1.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Technology and trust</span></h4>
<p><b>Technology earns recommendations. Trust drives action.</b></p>
<p>In 2026, <a href="https://logicbroker.com/original-research-report-the-state-of-agentic-commerce/" target="_blank">68% of e-commerce leaders</a> planned to invest between $1 million and $5 million in agentic commerce capabilities. On the other side of the shopping experience, research published in March 2026 revealed that about <a href="https://www.radial.com/resources/press-room/radial-survey-finds-58-of-consumers-are-open-to-using-an-ai-agent-yet-only-6-have-done-so?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank">six in 10 shoppers</a> say they are willing to place orders through an AI assistant. Together, these trends signal a rapid shift toward AI-powered commerce, where winning the recommendation becomes a critical part of winning market share.</p>
<p>However, offering recommendations doesn’t necessarily lead to action. In fact, the same consumer survey mentioned above found that while 58% of shoppers would consider ordering via an AI assistant, <a href="https://www.radial.com/resources/press-room/radial-survey-finds-58-of-consumers-are-open-to-using-an-ai-agent-yet-only-6-have-done-so?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank">just 6%</a> have actually done so.</p>
<p>For brands and retailers, advantage in the agentic era will come only if consumers first trust the recommendations AI surfaces—and ultimately feel confident enough to either act on them themselves or delegate the purchase to an AI agent.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://consumergoods.com/tapestrys-kate-spade-gets-agentic-commerce-shopping-assistant" target="_blank">Kate Spade’s AI Gift Concierge</a> uses conversational AI to help shoppers navigate one of retail’s most uncertain purchase moments: choosing the right gift. By asking about the occasion, recipient and style, the assistant translates ambiguous intent into curated product recommendations. This experience gives shoppers greater confidence in why a recommendation fits, helping build the trust required before consumers delegate more purchase decisions to AI.</p>
<p>Beyond hosting brand-led tools, <a href="https://www.mirakl.com/blog/top-retail-media-trends-2026" target="_blank">many retailers are now standing up their own AI shopping assistants</a> on owned digital and in-store channels, pairing agent-generated recommendations with the loyalty history and purchase data only the retailer holds. Because the interaction happens on an owned channel, the value can compound: Every conversation gives the retailer richer context to make the next interaction more relevant. Over time, this strengthens both the customer relationship and the retailer’s first-party advantage.</p>
<h4><span class="h5"><span class="text-bold-italic">2.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Action and accountability</span></h4>
<p><b>AI takes the action. Brands own the outcome.</b></p>
<p>An AI agent may complete the transaction, but brands and retailers remain accountable for the entire shopping experience.</p>
<p>For example, if an order arrives late because an AI agent provided an inaccurate delivery estimate or a recommendation misses the mark, consumers are unlikely to distinguish between the AI and the brand behind it. Instead, they’ll hold the latter responsible.</p>
<p>This is why AI must be treated as a formal extension of the brand experience and not a disconnected technology layer.</p>
<p>Walmart's agentic commerce strategy reflects this shift. Rather than treating AI platforms like ChatGPT as separate sales channels, Walmart began integrating its own <a href="https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-sparky-chatgpt-instant-checkout/815647/" target="_blank">AI assistant, Sparky,</a> into those experiences while continuing to own fulfillment, customer service and the broader shopping journey. Whether a customer discovers a product through ChatGPT, Gemini or the Walmart app, the retailer remains accountable for everything that happens after the recommendation, giving them greater insight and control into executing every part of the customer experience.</p>
<p>The broader industry is moving in the same direction. After early experiments with native checkout, OpenAI shifted its commerce experience toward merchant-owned conversion journeys, while continuing to support deeper integrations within ChatGPT.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://taylorsicard.com/the-index/ai-checkout-tracker-2026" target="_blank">newer protocols from Google and Perplexity</a> also keep the retailer as merchant of record. For retailers, this creates an opening: Owning checkout, fulfillment and the post-purchase relationship gives them the control to deliver on the promises AI agents make upstream.</p>
<h4><span class="h5"><span class="text-bold-italic">3.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Data and collaboration</span></h4>
<p><b>Great experiences are built on shared data.</b></p>
<p>The agentic shelf isn’t just changing how consumers shop; it’s influencing how brands and retailers work together.</p>
<p>Unlike the physical or digital shelf, where each party could optimize its own part of the customer journey, agentic commerce creates a shared responsibility. Brands own much of the rich product information AI needs to evaluate products, while retailers provide the commerce services that enable those recommendations to become seamless purchases.</p>
<p>The importance of that shared foundation is already becoming clear. Research shows that pages with structured data are cited <a href="https://commercetools.com/blog/agentic-commerce-stats-enterprise-guide" target="_blank">3.1 times more frequently</a> in Google AI Overviews. Similarly, <a href="https://commercetools.com/blog/agentic-commerce-stats-enterprise-guide" target="_blank">71% of pages cited by ChatGPT</a> and <a href="https://commercetools.com/blog/agentic-commerce-stats-enterprise-guide" target="_blank">65% of those cited by Google AI Mode</a> contain structured data. As AI increasingly becomes the interface for shopping, structured product information becomes the foundation for trusted recommendations.</p>
<p>An early example of this shift is the industry's accelerated push toward common product identifiers through <a href="https://www.paz.ai/guides/optimize-product-feed-for-ai-agents" target="_blank">GS1 standards</a>, including global trade item numbers (GTINs) and structured attributes that give each product a consistent, verified identity across every retailer, warehouse and platform that touches it. An estimated <a href="https://www.paz.ai/glossary/how-to-structure-product-data-for-ai-agents" target="_blank">86% of product data feeds contain at least one invalid GTIN</a>, which is exactly the kind of gap brands and retailers need to close together. Rather than treating product data as a brand asset or a retailer asset, that shared standard positions it as common infrastructure for the agentic shelf.</p>
<p>Retailers bring a distinct advantage to this shared foundation: <a href="https://www.mirakl.com/blogs/retail-media/top-retail-media-trends-2026/" target="_blank">a unified view of first-party signals</a> from in-store purchases, on-site browsing and loyalty programs that no single brand or AI platform can replicate on its own. Feeding that unified signal into a well-structured, agent-readable catalog is what turns a retailer's data advantage into a durable edge on the agentic shelf.</p>
<h3><span class="h4" style="font-weight: normal;">3 actions brands and retailers should take to win in the agentic commerce era</span></h3>
<p>The ability to earn AI recommendations—and the consumer trust that powers the rest of the experience—depends on building the right digital foundations. Here we offer three priorities brands and retailers should focus on today to prepare for the next era of commerce.</p>
<ol>
<li><b>Build recommendations on data designed for both people and machines.<br>
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</b>In the agentic era, trusted recommendations begin with trusted data. Consumers will only delegate purchasing decisions if they have confidence in the recommendations AI provides—and those recommendations are only as good as the product, customer and operational data that powers them.<br>
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</li>
<li><b>Create the foundations for AI to scale—not just tools that work.<br>
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</b>Success in the agentic era won't come from adopting more AI tools, but from building the foundations that allow AI to scale securely, consistently and across the enterprise. That starts with a modern, AI-ready architecture that can connect people, agents, systems and business processes. It also requires orchestration that allows AI to operate seamlessly across the customer journey rather than as a series of disconnected point solutions.<br>
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</li>
<li><b>Make collaboration part of the foundation.<br>
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</b>Agentic commerce doesn't operate within a single function—or even a single organization. Delivering seamless AI-powered shopping experiences requires closer collaboration across commercial, technology and operational teams, while also strengthening partnerships between brands and retailers. For retailers, that means aligning merchandising, supply chain and IT roadmaps to the same product-data timelines their brand partners are working against, rather than each side updating according to their own schedule.</li>
</ol>
<h3><span class="h4" style="font-weight: normal;">Winning the agentic shelf starts with people</span></h3>
<p>The brands that win the agentic shelf won’t simply be the ones with the most advanced AI. They’ll be the ones that make AI more useful, more trustworthy and more accountable to the people it serves. Because even when an agent makes the recommendation, the relationship still belongs to the brand.</p>
<p><i>Is your organization ready to compete and win in an agentic commerce future? Cognizant can help. Contact our authors to start the conversation or visit our</i><a href="https://www.cognizant.com/us/en/cmp/agentic-commerce-readiness-hfs-cognizant-2026" target="_blank"><i> Agentic Commerce Readiness page</i></a><i> to learn more.</i></p>