Agentic commerce is here: How retailers can prepare for the new shopping era

Shopping is at a pivotal moment.  For years, retailers have been focused on optimizing the digital shelf, personalizing recommendations, and streamlining checkout. These improvements have been valuable, but they’re incremental changes to a model that is about to be completely disrupted. The next wave of transformation isn't just a minor shift; it's a fundamental change in how consumers discover, research, and purchase products.

We are entering the era of agentic commerce, where AI agents act on behalf of both consumers and businesses, creating a more dynamic, intelligent, and autonomous shopping ecosystem.  

Consumers now expect personalization and proactive assistance that goes beyond traditional e-commerce capabilities. We’re already seeing consumers interact with AI agents — whether on their own devices or through a retailers site — to manage their shopping journeys from start to finish. To meet these expectations, retailers need to think beyond earlier AI approaches. Predictive AI helps us forecast, and generative AI helps us create, but agentic AI allows for action to be taken on a user’s behalf. 

Agentic commerce creates a truly assistive experience that feels like a personal shopper for every consumer, no matter where they begin their journey. Retailers who prepare now can build meaningful competitive advantages in this new landscape.

Gone is the traditional way to discover and purchase products 

Think about the current consumer journey. It’s a series of disconnected steps. A consumer sees a product on social media, searches for it on a marketplace, reads reviews on a third-party site, and finally makes a purchase. Each step is a potential point of friction, an opportunity to lose the sale.

Traditional approaches — relying on static websites, manual search filters, and basic recommendation engines — are giving way to more intelligent, responsive systems. While predictive AI for demand forecasting and generative AI for creating product descriptions have been valuable, they are reactive tools in a world that demands proactive engagement. 

Hello, autonomous and seamlessly integrated shopping agents

Agentic commerce changes the paradigm from a consumer navigating a retailer's systems to a retailer's systems interacting with a consumer. This new ecosystem will redefine shopping interactions in a multitude of ways. 

Shoppers will embrace AI agents that discover products, compare options, negotiate prices, and complete purchases to give them exactly what they want at prices that work for them. Agents working for retailers will handle everything from personalizing product recommendations and managing inventory to negotiating, offering promotions, and even processing transactions with consumer agents. A retailer's agent might simultaneously engage with other merchant agents and thousands of consumer agents, offering personalized deals, confirming product availability, and coordinating fulfillment across the entire supply chain.

For retailers, we anticipate two primary interaction models as the backbone of this new commerce landscape:

Consumer-to-Merchant (C2M): This is where a consumer's personal AI agent acts as their proxy, interacting with various merchant agents to fulfill a request. Think of it as the ultimate personal shopping assistant.

For example, a consumer could instruct their agent: "I’m going to the Canadian Rockies in August and am not sure what to wear. Can you recommend a couple of outfits in my style?" The consumer agent learns the user's style, budget, and needs, then evaluates options across different merchants – autonomously interacting with marketplace agents to discover products, inventory agents to confirm sizing and availability, and payment agents to complete the purchase. 

Merchant-to-Merchant (M2M): This model involves a retailer’s AI agent interacting with other merchant agents to perform tasks, extending a retailer's capabilities beyond its own operations. Imagine a consumer asks your agent to purchase a product that is not in your catalog or is currently out of stock. Instead of losing the sale, your agent could interact with other retailers' agents to source the item, complete the transaction, and fulfill the order – creating a smooth experience for the consumer. This transforms competitors into a dynamic network of collaborators, allowing you to capture additional revenue.

Introducing two new opportunities for retailers 

This new agent-driven world presents retailers with two distinct opportunities:

1. Own the consumer experience end-to-end: Create a branded agentic experience that curates the entire journey, from discovery to loyalty. This means: 

1. Guiding intelligent product discovery by helping agents proactively connect consumers with the right products and cross-sell or upsell opportunities

2. Enabling cross-retailer shopping through your branded environment, aiming to facilitate negotiation and personalization 

3. Building loyalty through personalized experiences based on preferences and purchase history

2. Own the transaction, regardless of origin: Prioritize capturing the sale no matter where it originates — your site, a consumer's personal agent, or another platform. This involves:

1. Participating in the broader agentic commerce network through agent-to-agent transactions

2. Meeting industry-leading standards for payments, checkout, and agent interoperability

3. Making your products available wherever purchasing decisions happen

Building agentic commerce with Google Cloud

At Google Cloud, we believe the future of retail is not about choosing one path, but having the foundation to pursue both approaches. Our technology stack is built for AI at every layer, helping retailers create value across use cases — from consumer-facing products to foundational AI and enterprise infrastructure. 

For retailers looking to own the consumer experience, we provide the tools to build sophisticated, intelligent agents – starting with your data. Google Cloud helps retailers enrich their product catalogs with imagery, demand-side attributes, and structured data, making them accessible for AI agents to understand and recommend. This approach transforms product data into dynamic, intelligent digital shelf space. Built on our Gemini models and Vertex AI platform, our Conversational Commerce agent achieves precise understanding of consumer intent — grounded in signals from Google Search — to drive stronger conversions and revenue per visitor through intelligent shopping journeys.  

For retailers focused on operating as ecosystem players, we’re committed to agent interoperability. Agent communication requires common protocols and standards. That’s why we are championing open-source frameworks like the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol, which creates a common language for agents to interact, and the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) , a payment-agnostic framework for secure transactions.  Combined with our Agent Development Kit (ADK), we’re making it easier for retailers to build and deploy multi-agent systems that can securely connect across the commerce landscape.

Recommendations for getting started

The shift to agentic commerce is happening now and is the next practical step in the evolution of digital retail. Acting now will create meaningful competitive advantages. Here’s how to get started: 

1. Optimize product details for agentic discovery: Reliable, structured, and enriched product data creates your intelligent digital shelf. Help agents match products to intent through well-structured data. 

2. Build agent-ready infrastructure: Agentic commerce relies on a clean, unified data foundation. Prioritize strong backend data, APIs, and standard protocols to support this architectural shift. 

3. Foster human oversight and collaboration: Trust is essential. Build human oversight into your agentic systems to manage critical decisions, strengthen consumer confidence, and support responsible AI practices. 

The future of commerce will be shaped by agents working together across a connected landscape. The platforms that enable secure, intelligent agent interoperability will define the next generation of commerce. The time to build is now.

We encourage you to contribute to the protocol's evolution and help us define the future of agent interoperability by submitting ideas, contributing to the documentation, and engaging with the community.

Stay tuned to Transform for a follow-up blog that will dig deeper into agent-to-agent optimizations across marketing, supply chains, travel and payments.