Ecommerce’s Next Act: When Agents Do the Buying

Author

Jo Lambadjieva
June 04, 2025

In partnership with

From Our Sponsor:

Prevent coupon abuse, protect your profits

KeepCart: Coupon Protection partners with D2C brands like Quince, Blueland, Vessi and more to stop/monitor coupon leaks to sites/extensions like Honey, CapitalOne, RetailMeNot, and more to boost your DTC margins

Overpaid commissions to affiliates and influencers add up fast - Get rid of the headache and revenue losses with KeepCart.

TLDR: Ecommerce’s Next Act

Agentic commerce represents a fundamental shift from changing where we shop to who does the shopping, as AI agents increasingly handle routine purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers. This "actor shift" creates a clear divide between utility purchases (toilet paper, batteries) that are prime candidates for zero-click automation and emotional purchases (handbags, artwork) that remain human-centered experiences. Companies like Phia are already allowing consumers to set price thresholds for desired items and automatically execute purchases when conditions are met, while successful platforms implement strategic "pause buttons" where agents surface curated options rather than making fully autonomous decisions.

For retailers, this evolution requires a complete infrastructure overhaul from human-centric design to "Agent Experience Optimization" (AEO), where success depends on machine-readable product specifications, real-time inventory feeds, API-first checkout processes, and structured data that AI systems can parse effectively. Competitive advantages will shift toward proprietary preference graphs and detailed customer models rather than traditional marketing messaging, while brands that fail to accommodate programmatic purchases risk becoming invisible to agent-mediated transactions. As AI capabilities improve and consumer comfort with delegation grows, businesses must adapt their operations to serve both human customers and their AI agents, with early movers positioned to define the competitive landscape for the next decade of commerce evolution.

Ecommerce’s Next Act: When Agents Do the Buying

Here's something that's been quietly happening while everyone was arguing about whether AI will steal our jobs: the way we buy things is starting to change in a pretty fundamental way. Not the flashy, headline-grabbing stuff, but the boring infrastructure shifts that actually matter.

For thirty years, shopping disruption followed a pretty predictable script: change where people buy stuff. Malls to websites, websites to apps, apps to whatever comes next. But the shift happening now is different—it's not about where we shop, it's about who's doing the shopping. And honestly? It's both more interesting and less scary than the headlines make it sound.

The Great Shopping Handoff

Here's the basic idea, minus the Silicon Valley buzzword soup: people are starting to let AI agents handle the boring parts of buying things. Not all shopping—nobody's delegating their wedding dress selection to ChatGPT—but the tedious utility purchases that eat up mental bandwidth without delivering any joy.

Source: Phia

Companies like Phia (which just came out of stealth mode) let you set price alerts and automatically buy items when they hit your target. It's like having a really patient friend who actually remembers to check if that thing you wanted ever goes on sale.

The key insight here is that successful agentic commerce isn't about full automation. It's about curation with checkpoints. Think "Here are three gift options for mom's birthday" rather than "I bought mom a mystery gift, hope she likes it!" The pause button, it turns out, is the most important feature.

The Toilet Paper vs. Handbag Problem

This is where things get interesting from a business perspective. Shopping basically splits into two categories: stuff you need and stuff you want. The "stuff you need" category—toilet paper, phone chargers, that weird specific lightbulb for your kitchen—is ripe for automation. Nobody's browsing toilet paper for fun. The key metric becomes time not spent shopping.

But emotional purchases? That's different territory entirely. Shopping for handbags or home décor involves identity, discovery, and—let's be honest—the weird satisfaction of finding exactly the right thing after browsing for way too long. Here, agents work more like personal stylists, surfacing options rather than making decisions.

The Infrastructure Reality Check

Here's where my inner data nerd gets excited (sorry, not sorry): current e-commerce platforms are built for human eyeballs. Pretty pictures, intuitive navigation, engaging product descriptions. But when software agents start doing significant portions of the purchasing, all that human-friendly design becomes irrelevant overhead.

We're looking at a shift toward what Agent Experience Optimization—basically SEO for robots. Retailers need structured product data, real-time inventory feeds, API-first checkout processes. If an agent can't parse your product information or execute a purchase programmatically, that sale disappears before a human customer even knows you exist.

This creates opportunities for new types of service companies—Agent-ready Checkout providers, universal product schema developers, contract-based supply chain managers. It's infrastructure buildout disguised as commerce evolution.

The AI Layer Nobody Talks About

The AI powering this shift is more sophisticated than most people realize. These systems need to understand not just explicit preferences ("blue shirt under $50") but implicit constraints like how sizing varies across brands, fabric preferences, delivery timing considerations. They're processing taste profiles, purchasing patterns, contextual needs—basically becoming digital shopping assistants who actually remember what you like.

More importantly, they're developing negotiation capabilities that operate at machine speed. Scraping promotional codes, maximizing loyalty benefits, identifying arbitrage opportunities across platforms. It's the kind of relentless price optimization that humans are too impatient (or too busy) to do consistently.

The result? Downward pressure on margins as always-on negotiation bots exploit every available discount.

Cultural Speed Bumps Ahead

Adoption won't happen uniformly, obviously. Privacy-conscious markets will demand transparency and control mechanisms. Regions with established super-app ecosystems (looking at you, China) may embrace autonomous agent behaviors more readily than places where retail is still fragmented across multiple platforms.

Generational differences matter too. Digital natives who grew up with recommendation algorithms might delegate purchasing decisions more easily. Meanwhile, those of us who remember actually reading Consumer Reports (yes, I'm dating myself) may need more gradual onboarding and explicit control mechanisms.

I fall somewhere in the middle—curious enough to try new tech but paranoid enough to want detailed logs of what my AI agent is buying on my behalf.

The Competitive Scramble

This shift creates new types of competitive advantages. Retailers who capture detailed preference graphs—models of individual consumer tastes, sizes, constraints—can lock in recurring business. Think Amazon's household profiles, but extended across comprehensive lifestyle categories.

Brand differentiation increasingly depends on machine-readable attributes rather than marketing messaging. Sustainability scores, ingredient lists, detailed specifications become critical when agents make decisions based on structured data rather than emotional appeals.

The flip side? Companies that don't adapt risk becoming invisible to agent-mediated transactions. If your product catalog can't be parsed by AI systems or your checkout process can't accommodate programmatic purchases, you're excluded from growing commerce volume.

What This Actually Means

The transition won't happen overnight—these things never do, despite what the conference speakers promise. But the foundational pieces are already falling into place. As AI capabilities improve and consumer comfort with delegation grows, we're likely looking at the same adoption curve that characterized the shift from offline to online retail.

The implications extend beyond simple automation. Just as mobile commerce enabled direct-to-consumer brands and subscription models, agentic commerce will probably spawn business models we can't yet envision. The "bed-in-a-box" phenomenon of the agent era is out there waiting to be discovered.

Do You Love The AI For Ecommerce Sellers Newsletter?

You can help us!

Spread the word to your colleagues or friends who you think would benefit from our weekly insights 🙂 Simply forward this issue.

In addition, we are open to sponsorships. We have more than 35,000 subscribers with 75% of our readers based in the US. To get our rate card and more info, email us at [email protected]

The Quick Read:

The Tools List:

📊 Syncly: Extract insights from customer feedback.

🤖 AgentX: Build an AI agent chatbot for your business in less than 5 minutes.

🌪️ Exa Categories - Search filters that get only the type of content you want.

⚙️ Tiledesk - Rapidly deploy AI-powered conversations across social channels.

🌐 Dora AI: Create a fully editable website from just one line of text with AI.

📧 Klaviyo AI - Create and understand campaigns faster with AI segments, forms, insights and more.

About The Writer:

Jo Lambadjieva is an entrepreneur and AI expert in the e-commerce industry. She is the founder and CEO of Amazing Wave, an agency specializing in AI-driven solutions for e-commerce businesses. With over 13 years of experience in digital marketing, agency work, and e-commerce, Joanna has established herself as a thought leader in integrating AI technologies for business growth.

For Team and Agency AI training book an intro call here.

What did you think of today’s email?