What Agentic Commerce Means for the Future of Shopping
Agentic commerce is a retail model where AI shopping agents act on behalf of shoppers to search, compare, recommend and even orchestrate purchases across channels, creating a more personalized, conversational and automated buying journey that blends search, recommendations and guided selling into a single AI-powered customer experience. Retailers see this as the next phase of ecommerce: instead of customers clicking through static pages, they interact with conversational shopping assistants that understand context, intent and constraints like budget or delivery speed. A joint report from Salesforce and Publicis Sapient projects that AI agent-orchestrated commerce could generate between $3 trillion and $5 trillion in global revenue by 2030, compressing what might once have been a decade of digital change into only a few years as consumers shift quickly toward AI-powered search and assistance.
Walmart’s Sparky Shows the Revenue Power of AI Shopping Agents
Walmart is positioning itself as “AI native” by putting Sparky, its conversational shopping agent, at the center of both digital and in-store journeys. Sparky now supports shoppers on the ecommerce site, mobile app and in physical stores, including features like personalized replenishment, meal planning and recommendations tuned to inventory position, pricing and delivery options. Weekly active users have more than doubled in a single quarter, and Walmart reports that customers who use Sparky have an average order value about 35% higher than non-users. The retailer has also expanded Sparky to Spanish speakers and tied it into automatic reorders for repeat items, strengthening loyalty. Behind the scenes, Walmart is applying the same AI capabilities to its supply chain so the agent’s promises around speed and availability match real-world fulfillment, tightening the loop between retail AI personalization and operational performance.
DICK’S Sporting Goods Turns AI into a Digital Coach for Athletes
DICK’S Sporting Goods is taking a more niche approach to agentic commerce with Coach by DICK’S, an AI-powered conversational shopping assistant built into its mobile app. Instead of limiting the experience to product search, Coach is designed as a long-term companion for athletes, offering tailored recommendations, training guidance and product education across sports and skill levels. The system draws on Adobe Brand Concierge technology and DICK’S proprietary sport knowledge to mirror the expertise found in its stores, but in a digital, always-on format. As athletes share goals, preferences and behaviors, the agent adapts in real time, aiming to make gear selection and training decisions more confident and informed. Over time, DICK’S plans to expand functionality, turning Coach into a core channel for retail AI personalization that can both drive sales and strengthen the brand’s role in customers’ sports journeys.
Amazon Commercializes Alexa for Shopping as a Retail AI Platform
Amazon is moving to the platform side of agentic commerce by turning its internal AI shopping technology into a product for other retailers. AWS’s new Agentic Shopping Assistant is built on the same foundation as Alexa for Shopping on Amazon.com, which the company says drove nearly $12 billion (approx. RM55.2 billion) in incremental sales last year. Retailers can use the service to deploy branded AI shopping agents that converse with customers, answer detailed product questions and tailor recommendations to each store’s assortment, rules and promotions. Amazon claims these assistants can go live in about 60 days, targeting brands that want a fast path into AI-powered customer experiences without building their own stack. Early adopters include Kate Spade, which launched an AI gift concierge to guide shoppers through occasions, recipients and style preferences before suggesting products, blending guided selling with conversational commerce.
A $5 Trillion Race and the New Unified Commerce Stack
Industry forecasts suggest that the shift to agentic commerce will be both rapid and large. Salesforce and Publicis Sapient estimate that AI agent-orchestrated shopping could account for between $3 trillion and $5 trillion in global revenue by 2030, while Accenture expects more than 30% of online commerce to run through AI agents by that time, representing about $3.1 trillion (approx. RM14.26 trillion) in transactions. This momentum is driving a consolidation of the ecommerce tech stack as retailers replace separate tools for search, recommendations and guided selling with single AI models that orchestrate end-to-end journeys. Platform agents such as ChatGPT already handle hundreds of millions of shopping-related queries each week, pushing retailers to become “agent-addressable” so their products are discoverable by both humans and AI. Those that move early can shape how their catalogs, prices and experiences appear inside these new AI shopping agents.
