Agentic shopping: the accelerating ascent of a-commerce

The agents are coming. With the emergence of software tools that can make decisions and transact purchases, shopping will be revolutionised. In the new world of agentic a-commerce, there will be a shift in power. Value will move from consumer attention and branding to data quality, pricing transparency and fulfilment reliability. Agents will optimise for value and not impulse. Revolutions do not happen overnight. Building trust and familiarity take time. Delegating purchasing authority to software is both psychologically and operationally hard. Nonetheless, by 2030, the US agentic commerce market could be worth up to $400bn in gross merchandise value, and China’s substantially more. Leading retailers such as Amazon and Walmart in the US as well as Alibaba and JD.com in China have already successfully launched agentic shopping assistants. More will follow. The ultimate winners, however, may be the enablers, or the providers of payments and financial rails as well as logistics and fulfilment leaders.