The panelists agreed that agentic AI will play a role in consumer purchase interactions, although there is still some uncertainty about what it will look like.
Grether said a good commerce agent has two key components: relevant, personalized recommendations and a secure, trusted payment process for purchases. “We have a transaction graph, and in the context of agentic commerce, that helps us because we have a much broader perspective from the consumer as we see everything across the merchants,” he explained.
Allison Lambroza, Tripadvisor’s head of travel and growth in the Americas, expanded on Grether’s points in relation to the travel industry. The company has turned to AI for content consumption and personalization as search marketing in travel planning becomes more fragmented.
“From a payment perspective, travel is the most expensive thing that you typically buy before you’ve tried it,” she said. “So, understanding that trust, understanding where reviews play in the agentic experience, and that human element of it, will be really interesting.”
Discoverability and AI in the commerce funnel
Erin Vitellaro, senior director of media at Molson Coors, shared that the traditional ways people discover and try brands will change with AI, so it’s important to keep data clean. “We clean up our content that is out there and ensure our pricing data is very clear. So, when you’re in AI environments, it’s readable, and can then suggest our product.”
Molson Coors is accommodating new ways of discovery by generating insights into the context of how people use its products and aligning them with those moments. Vitellaro gave grilling as an example.
“If you were asking AI, ‘give me a beer that has a crisp flavor that will be perfect for grilling,’ we need to make sure we have a good understanding of the moments that we can intercept and have the content and context around that,” she said.
Popeyes is also focusing on improving discoverability. “We’re going through the exercise of cleaning up all our underlying data systems and making sure we can bring in the right information into those systems,” Rubin added.
What the future of commerce will bring
Grether believes that the agentic environment will evolve into a more horizontal model. He explained that right now, consumers shop at various independent retailers, but this will change in the future. “You’ll have an agent who’s basically looking across all the merchants in a horizontal way and coming up with a recommendation on behalf of the consumer across all the different options,” he said.