3 Trends Shaping Retail & CPG in 2026: Agentic Commerce & Beyond

1. Agentic Commerce and the Future of CX

Agentic commerce is a defining moment for retail because it fundamentally changes who drives the customer journey. As AI agents increasingly act on behalf of consumers to research, compare, and purchase products, retailers risk losing influence at critical decision points.

CX is no longer defined solely by a website, app, or store interaction. It is shaped by how well a retailer's data, inventory, pricing, and policies can be understood and acted upon by intelligent agents in real time.

Reshaping merchandising, marketing, and operations

Agentic commerce will reshape how retailers operate across merchandising, marketing, and operations. Product discovery will shift from search and browsing to AI-mediated recommendations, placing greater emphasis on structured data, content accuracy, and real-time availability. Promotions and pricing strategies will need to be machine-readable and dynamically optimized.

Customer service teams will increasingly collaborate with AI agents handling routine inquiries, order changes, and post-purchase support. Retailers will need tighter integration across systems to ensure agents can execute seamlessly.

Higher stakes for personalization and trust

The bar for personalization and trust is higher with agentic AI. AI agents will make decisions based on a shopper's preferences, history, budget, and values. Retailers must deliver consistent, transparent experiences that reinforce brand credibility.

Policies around returns, sustainability, and fulfillment will matter more as agents evaluate retailers on reliability and alignment with customer expectations, not just price. Poor data quality or broken processes will cause agents to route demand elsewhere.

The opportunity for early movers

For retailers that invest now, the opportunity is significant. Agentic commerce can unlock deeper customer loyalty by delivering hyper-relevant experiences at scale, reducing friction across the path to purchase, and increasing conversion with less reliance on traditional marketing.

Intelligent agents like the Dynamic Seller Assistant Agent can also drive operational efficiency, from demand forecasting to automated replenishment and service resolution. Over time, retailers that build agent-ready ecosystems will be better positioned to capture share, protect margins, and differentiate on experience.

Agentic commerce signals a shift from reactive CX to proactive, orchestrated experiences driven by intelligence. Retailers that embrace this evolution will meet customers where they are and anticipate where they're going, creating a more resilient, efficient, and customer-centric business model.

2. RMN: Commerce Media’s Next Era

RMNs have rapidly evolved from simple digital ad placements into powerful commerce-driven advertising ecosystems. 

RMNs leverage first-party data like purchase history, browsing behavior, and loyalty signals to engage highly motivated shoppers during moments of purchase intent. This has helped RMNs grow into a major revenue stream for retailers and a critical channel for brands seeking measurable, conversion-focused advertising.

What once was about audience reach has shifted toward influencing behavior at the point of purchase, bridging advertising and commerce in one seamless experience.

The shift: from human shoppers to AI agents

At the same time, agentic AI is reshaping the retail landscape. As the agentic evolution continues, these systems will do more than generate recommendations. They will understand preferences, execute tasks, and interact across platforms with minimal human intervention.

As consumers become more comfortable with AI assistants, retailers face a sharp change: The customer will no longer be the human browsing the site but the AI agent executing the shopping decisions. In this model, product discovery and purchase can bypass traditional search and browse behavior.

The intersection of RMNs and agentic AI

The competitive edge in commerce media lies at the intersection of RMNs and agentic AI. As agents autonomously handle shopping journeys, they will prioritize product options based on deep data insights: price, availability, delivery speed, personalization, loyalty incentives, and brand affinity.

Retailers that can integrate real-time data and signals into their RMNs make their products "agent ready" for these autonomous systems, improving visibility and choice likelihood when an AI assistant makes decisions for the shopper. Without this integration, retailers risk becoming fulfillment partners while the value of discovery, preference, and engagement shifts upstream to the AI platforms controlling the shopping conversation.

Dynamic optimization at scale

Agentic AI enhances RMNs in ways that static, manual processes never could. As AI agents become more ubiquitous and companies mature in their handling of agents, these systems will dynamically tailor media placements, optimize campaign budgets in real time, and deliver personalized experiences at scale. This leads to higher return on ad spend, greater shopper engagement, and improved operational efficiencies in campaigns and pricing strategies.

Retailers that embrace agentic AI capabilities within their media platforms will elevate CX and unlock new revenue streams by enabling autonomous decisioning that aligns with customer intent and preferences.

The strategic imperative

RMNs must evolve beyond digital billboards into machine-first marketplaces, where first-party data, API-ready product attributes, and insights-driven personalization become the new currency. Agentic AI will increasingly prioritize efficiency and relevance, making it essential for retailers to ensure their RMN infrastructures are compatible with autonomous agents and enriched with actionable, high-quality data.

These shifts require new operating models, cross-channel alignment, and continuous innovation to remain competitive as commerce transitions into its next era.

3. Immersive Retail & the Intelligent Retail Ecosystem

The rise of immersive retail signals that customer expectations have moved beyond channels to experiences. Shoppers no longer distinguish between physical and digital. They expect seamless, connected journeys that adapt to the now.

Immersive, phygital experiences are becoming table stakes as consumers demand convenience, personalization, and immediacy across every touchpoint. Retailers that fail to unify these environments risk fragmented experiences that erode trust, loyalty, and share.

Phygital retail blends physical spaces with digital intelligence

Stores are evolving into experiential hubs where digital tools augment the in-store experience:

• Smart shelves and interactive displays
• Mobile-assisted shopping
• AI-powered associates

Day to day, retailers must align store operations, merchandising, and digital content so customers can move effortlessly between online discovery and in-store fulfillment, returns, or consultations. The store becomes both a brand stage and a data engine, feeding insight back into the broader ecosystem.

Improved logistics are the backbone

Immersive experiences quickly fall apart if fulfillment is slow, inaccurate, or inconsistent. As same-day delivery, BOPIS, curbside, and ship-from-store become standard, retailers must invest in real-time inventory visibility, predictive demand planning, and automated fulfillment.

Day-to-day operations will increasingly rely on smarter orchestration across warehouses, stores, and last-mile partners to ensure promises made in immersive environments are reliably kept.

AI is the connective tissue

Intelligent agents continuously monitor demand signals, inventory positions, and customer intent, autonomously triggering actions like replenishment, re-routing orders, or personalizing experiences.

For frontline teams, this reduces manual decision-making and firefighting, allowing employees to focus on service, storytelling, and problem resolution. For customers, it creates experiences that feel intuitive, proactive, and effortless.

The opportunity

Retailers that invest now build a more resilient, adaptive business model. An intelligent retail ecosystem powered by phygital experiences, optimized logistics, and agentic AI enables retailers to respond faster to change, personalize without complexity, and turn every interaction into a moment of value creation.

Those that lead in this space will differentiate on experience and unlock operational efficiencies and long-term loyalty.

Dive deeper into the convergence of agentic commerce and supply chain in this look at AI Agents for Supplier Risk Assessment.

Building for the Future of Retail

The convergence of agentic commerce, intelligent retail media ecosystems, and phygital experiences marks a fundamental shift in how retail operates, competes, and creates value. Retailers that move decisively in 2026 will define the competitive standard for the next decade.

Success requires more than adopting new technologies. It demands reimagining operations, customer engagement, and business models. Retailers must build data foundations that enable real-time decisioning, create seamless integration across physical and digital environments, and develop AI capabilities that can autonomously optimize experiences and operations at scale.

The winners will be those that recognize agentic commerce as an immediate competitive reality. They will invest in making their products discoverable and actionable for AI agents, evolve their retail media networks into machine-first platforms, and build intelligent ecosystems that deliver connected, frictionless experiences.

As AI agents become more sophisticated and consumers grow more comfortable delegating purchase decisions, retailers with agent-ready infrastructures will capture disproportionate value. Those that wait risk becoming invisible in an increasingly AI-mediated marketplace.

The future of retail belongs to those who move now.