Retailgentic | Consumer Behavior & Retail Trend

Everyone is focused on how AI helps people discover products. But what happens after that? In this episode of Retailgentic, we go deep on the missing layer of agentic commerce: checkout, payments, and fulfillment. Because it turns out, the hardest part isn’t finding the product. It’s buying it.
Rye is building what they describe as the “Stripe for commerce.” It connects AI agents, apps, and platforms to merchants handling:
Checkout and order placement
Payment orchestration
Fulfillment across retailers like Amazon and Shopify
In short: if an AI agent decides what to buy, Rye helps it actually buy it.

Highlights 
Checkout is the real bottleneck: Discovery is improving fast, but actually placing an order across fragmented systems is still incredibly hard.
Rye enables real AI purchasing: They connect agents to merchants, allowing products to be bought directly from platforms like Amazon.
Amazon is a critical unlock: Most bots are blocked, but Rye’s API-based approach allows real transactions to go through.
Protocols won’t solve everything: Even if UCP/ACP take off, long-tail merchants and major players won’t fully standardize.
B2B is the sleeper opportunity: Complex procurement decisions are a perfect fit for agent-driven commerce.
AI reduces returns: More context leads to better decisions, driving return rates extremely low.
We’re still early, but close: One breakout use case could flip massive volume into agentic commerce quickly.
Agentic commerce isn’t just about what gets recommended—it’s about what actually gets bought.

Timestamps:
 02:00 — Meet Arjun Bhargava and Rye
 04:00 — Founding story and early vision
 08:00 — Contextual commerce → agentic commerce
 11:00 — What Rye does (simple explanation)
 14:00 — How AI agents place orders
 18:00 — The rye.com story
 22:00 — Amazon integration and why it matters
 26:00 — Payments, tokenization, and infrastructure
 30:00 — UCP vs ACP debate
 35:00 — Why protocols won’t cover everything
 40:00 — Where agentic commerce is heading
 42:00 — B2B opportunity and procurement
 46:00 — Real-world AI agent example
 47:30 — Closing

👉 Connect with Arjun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhargava/
👉 Learn more about Rye: rye.com
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In this episode, Scot sits down with Debra to unpack what might be the most important shift in digital advertising since social media.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening right now, and brands that don’t understand it risk getting left out of the new chain of commerce.

Highlights 
Why ChatGPT’s ad rollout is just the beginning, not an experiment
The tension between trust vs. monetization in AI interfaces
How retailers are both excited and terrified of AI shopping agents
The emergence of “AI Media” as a new category (like social + retail media before it)
Why current ad formats are “boring”… and what comes next
How companies should actually prepare (hint: it’s not just media buying)
The shift from advertising to agent influence, and what that means for the future
We’re still early, but not that early. The rules of digital advertising are being rewritten in real time, and for the first time in decades, the winners aren’t obvious. The question isn’t whether AI will reshape commerce. It’s whether your products, and your data, are ready to compete when agents decide what gets bought.
Timestamps:
 02:19 – Meet Debra Aho Williamson 
 05:00 – From social media to AI: spotting the next shift 
 09:00 – What “AI Ad Economy” actually means 
 11:00 – Are we at a social media–level inflection point? 
 13:00 – ChatGPT ads: early signals and what matters 
 16:00 – Why current AI ads look like search ads 
 18:00 – Trust vs. monetization: the line platforms can’t cross 
 23:00 – Why retailers are leading AI ad adoption 
 25:00 – Google’s AI ad strategy vs. ChatGPT 
 29:00 – Perplexity, Copilot, and the fragmented landscape 
 33:00 – Where Meta fits (and why it’s surprising) 
 35:00 – New ad formats: sponsored prompts + conversational ads 
 38:00 – Reddit, TikTok, and emerging players 
 40:00 – How brands should prepare for AI media 
 43:00 – Why structured product data is critical 
 45:00 – The future: ads for agents, not humans

👉 Connect with Debra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debrawilliamson/
👉 Learn more about Sonata Insights: https://www.sonatainsights.com/
🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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Today we’re dropping a surprise podcast that is different than anything we’ve done before and a first of it’s kind! Scot Wingo was invited by Ben Miller, VP of Content and Strategy to participate in the first ever shoptalk debate format talk. The topic - Agentic Commerce Will AI agents transform retail?
On the pro agentic side we had Ekta Chopin, CDO at ELF Beauty and myself.  If you’re not familiar with Ekta, she’s a thought leading CDO and has a great substack for other CDOs.
On the ‘anti agentic side’ we had Sarah Marzano, Principal Analyst, Retail Ecommerce and Retail Media at Emarketer and Andrew Lipsman - independent analyst and consultant for media, ads and commerce.
Before the show, Scot asked and received permission from Shoptalk and all the participants to turn the raw audio into a podcast. In the AI era, speed matters so we are getting this in your hands only 2 days after it happened.
This debate took place at 12pm PDT on Tuesday March 24th at Shoptalk’s AI Stage.
Timestamps
00:01 – Why this episode is different from anything Retailgentic has done before
01:28 – The Shoptalk debate topic: Will AI Agents Transform Retail?
02:04 – Meet the debaters: Ekta Chopra, Andrew Lipsman, and Sarah Marzano
07:48 – The first big battle: how should agentic commerce be defined?
10:25 – Scot’s argument: consumers are already changing behavior faster than many retailers realize
13:16 – Sarah’s pushback: brands need clarity before making big bets
15:18 – Consumer adoption: how much automation will shoppers really accept?
17:16 – Why product data and offer-card visibility matter now
19:05 – Andrew’s argument: shopping still requires human decision-making
23:05 – Ekta on brand visibility, content readiness, and why this matters for beauty
24:49 – 2030 predictions: will 10% of e-commerce be bot-to-bot?
27:03 – Does agentic commerce threaten retail media?
29:11 – Sarah’s case for why AI referrals may actually help retailers
32:22 – Ekta on why rich product data matters more than media for e.l.f.
33:06 – Scot’s case that traffic decline is already starting in some categories
37:16 – What brands and retailers should do over the next 6–18 months
40:25 – Why Sarah says brands should test, but not overreact
42:11 – Scot’s closing case for why this shift is fundamentally different
43:22 – Andrew’s closing warning against fear-based decision-making
🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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This episode explores the shift from traditional search and ecommerce flows into a new agentic commerce environment where shoppers are using AI surfaces to discover, compare, and increasingly delegate parts of the buying journey.
Ashish explains what Google was seeing internally that led to the development of UCP, why the protocol was designed to be open and ecosystem-wide, and why the ambition goes far beyond checkout. He also shares how Google is thinking about discovery, conversational product data, merchant readiness, and the long-term role of AI across the shopping journey.
For retailers, brands, marketplaces, and commerce tech teams, this conversation is a helpful window into what Google believes is changing now, and what foundations businesses should be investing in before the market fully shifts.
Highlights 
How Google’s large-scale ad and data systems shaped his approach to commerce
Why UCP emerged now, and the two major trends that inspired it
Why Google believes agentic commerce needs an open, ecosystem-wide standard
Why the future of UCP extends far beyond checkout
How discovery is starting to take shape within the protocol
Why richer, more conversational product data matters in AI shopping experiences
What retailers need to do now to improve visibility on AI surfaces
How Google is thinking about the relationship between agentic commerce and advertising
Why agentic commerce is still early, but already moving from concept to reality
Agentic commerce is still early, but this conversation makes one thing clear: the infrastructure decisions being made now will shape who gets discovered, considered, and chosen in the next era of shopping.

Timestamps
2:32 — Welcome and introduction to Ashish Gupta
5:01 — Building Google’s data infrastructure and declarative querying at scale
9:43 — AI at Google before the current wave
11:32 — What it means to be an Engineering Fellow at Google
14:00 — Balancing technical leadership and operational leadership
16:10 — Why Ashish moved into merchant shopping
17:41 — The origin story behind UCP
24:58 — Why Google chose an open protocol approach
27:50 — Responding to skepticism around Google’s commerce efforts
32:30 — Discovery, catalog search, and where UCP expands next
35:39 — Multi-item and multi-merchant cart support
37:43 — New protocol capabilities and partner onboarding
38:42 — Why product data quality matters more in AI shopping
43:22 — How shoppers are using AI surfaces in more complex ways
47:47 — Agentic commerce and advertising
50:10 — Where agentic commerce may go from here
51:46 — Closing thoughts and where to follow Ashish

👉 Connect with Ashish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/
👉 Check out UCP announcement: https://www.retailgentic.com/p/flash-googlenrf-announces-universal

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In this episode, we take a deep dive into what buyer-side agentic commerce could actually look like. The conversation explores the origins of the company, why Darryl and Ross focused on reducing friction for buyers, and how that unexpectedly opened up solutions for sellers, payment providers, and enterprise procurement teams as well.
The episode also features a live demo of Vendee Labs’ platform, showing conversational discovery, real-time product retrieval, multi-vendor carting, and a multi-item ACP checkout flow. 
Highlights
Why Vendee Labs is approaching agentic commerce from the buyer’s perspective
The founding story behind the company and the friction that inspired it
How ChatGPT and Claude changed the direction of the product
A live demo of conversational commerce across real merchants
What a multi-vendor, multi-item ACP checkout could mean for online shopping
Why autonomous commerce needs legal and governance frameworks, not just AI
The vision for a Universal Protocol Bridge across ACP, UCP, and future standards
How strong permissions and audit trails could reduce chargebacks and disputes
Why poor product data creates broken outcomes in agentic shopping
Where Vendee Labs sees opportunity across consumer, B2B, procurement, and white-label use cases
Vendee Labs is betting that the future of commerce won’t just be agent-powered—it will be buyer-centered, trust-driven, and built to work across whatever protocols come next.
Timestamps:
 00:06:09 — Ross shares his background in global technology planning and delivery
00:07:23 — Darryl shares his background in retail IT, telecom, AI, and governance
00:08:53 — Darryl reflects on AI before and after the ChatGPT moment
00:10:03 — Discussion on LLMs, explainability, and true intelligence
00:11:26 — The founding story behind Vendee Labs
00:13:13 — How the product evolved into its current form
00:16:06 — The Vendee Labs pitch: changing how the world buys
00:17:06 — Why solving buyer friction also solves seller-side pain points
00:20:18 — Live demo begins
00:21:10 — Running shoes search and conversational discovery demo
00:25:42 — Multi-vendor cart and checkout walkthrough
00:31:06 — Why richer product data is critical for agentic commerce
00:35:46 — Consumer, B2B, procurement, and white-label distribution paths
00:38:46 — Team size, bootstrapping, and current company stage
00:40:39 — Ross outlines roadmap, buyer taxonomy, and MVP plans
00:42:15 — Scot and Darryl discuss adoption speed in agentic commerce
00:44:18 — Darryl’s theory on trust events and adoption
00:45:34 — Governance-by-design versus fixing broken outputs later
00:47:46 — Where to learn more and try the demo

👉 Connect with Darryl: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylcarlton/
👉 Connect with Ross: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossgardiner/
👉 Check out the demo: https://vendeelabs.com/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic