We are watching the retail playbook get rewritten in real-time. If you thought the transition from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce was disruptive, the shift to Agentic AI is about to make that look like a warm-up act.
The opening weeks of 2026 have signaled a massive change in how big business approaches the customer journey. Major players like Etsy, Target, and Walmart are no longer just relying on their own apps; they are pushing their product ranges directly onto third-party AI platforms like Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot.
Why does this matter to a founder or business owner? Because the fundamental way humans buy things is changing—and it involves a lot less “shopping.”
The Great Trade-Off: Sales vs. Sovereignty
Here is the dilemma facing the boardroom: Access or Control?
By integrating with these massive AI agents, retailers get instant access to consumers where they already are. The numbers back this play—Adobe’s recent data showed a staggering 758% year-on-year growth in AI-driven traffic to e-commerce sites.
But this traffic comes with a steep price tag, and it isn’t financial. It’s data.
When a transaction happens entirely inside a chat interface, the brand loses the “digital body language” of the customer. You don’t see what they looked at before buying, what they hesitated on, or how they navigated your site. As Kartik Hosanagar from Wharton points out, if discovery and purchase happen on OpenAI, a retailer risks becoming nothing more than a logistics arm—a “fulfillment operation” without a relationship.
Marketing to Machines, Not People
This creates a fascinating new challenge for business strategy. In the near future, your marketing might not be designed to persuade a human; it will be designed to persuade an algorithm.
If a customer asks their AI agent, “Find me the best noise-canceling headphones under $300,” your goal is no longer to catch the customer’s eye with a flashy banner. Your goal is to be the answer the AI trusts.
Deloitte predicts that by 2027, the complex, multi-stage shopping journey we know today could collapse into a single AI-driven interaction. The implication is stark: Retailers will engage less with humans and more with their digital representatives.
The Amazon Exception
Interestingly, not everyone is playing the same game. Amazon is notably doubling down on its own ecosystem, keeping its gates closed and funneling users through its own AI, Rufus. They are betting that owning the entire pipe is more valuable than sharing the flow.
The Strategic Takeaway
For business leaders, the question isn’t whether to use AI, but where you want your “brand authority” to live.
If you hand over the discovery phase to a third-party agent, you gain efficiency but lose insight. As this technology matures, the winners won’t just be the ones with the best products; they will be the ones who figure out how to influence the AI agents acting on our behalf.
The era of the “always-available expert” is here. The question is: Is that expert recommending you?
