The Rise of Agentic Commerce in Retail
The line between a chatbot and an agent is the difference between answering and acting. Agentic commerce is the shift to AI systems that don’t just respond to a shopper’s question but plan, reason, and take multi-step action on the business’s behalf — across the whole journey, from first discovery to post-purchase support. An agent can build a cart, complete a consented action, and coordinate across channels; a chatbot can only reply.
The enabling technology
Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for CX is a useful worked example of what powers this shift — a platform that merges shopping and service into one agentic system built on Gemini models. Its core pieces:
- Configurable, pre-built agents for fast deployment across the customer lifecycle.
- A shopping agent that acts as a proactive concierge, using text, voice, and image to build carts and execute consented actions — moving past reactive recommendation toward genuine personalization.
- Conversational shopping with natural-language ordering across surfaces (mobile, kiosk, in-car), with upselling and real-time data sync.
- Agent Studio, tooling to build and scale always-on problem-solving agents and to guide human reps in real time.
It’s one vendor’s implementation, not the only one — but it maps the capabilities the pattern requires.
How brands are deploying it
Reported deployments show the pattern working across very different retail contexts.
The Home Depot is extending its Google Cloud partnership toward an “AI-first” interconnected store: a “Magic Apron” agent offering conversational project planning with aisle-level, store-localized navigation; AI-generated materials lists for pro contractors; and Gemini Enterprise tools that help store associates handle complex workflows.
Authentic Brands Group (owner of Reebok, Juicy Couture, and 50-plus brands) launched an “Authentic Intelligence” platform on Google Cloud’s media models (Imagen 3, Veo 3.1), running more than 15 specialized agents from business development to campaign creative. In early tests, agent-enhanced ad creative for Reebok reportedly delivered up to 60% higher return on ad spend than traditional imagery.
The Estée Lauder Companies rebuilt Jo Malone London’s in-store fragrance consultation as a conversational agent on Vertex AI and Gemini — mapping a shopper’s natural-language description of a scent to complex olfactory data to recommend with expert-level confidence.
Others are following the same shape: Gap Inc. across its brand portfolio for product creation and CX; Honeywell’s Google Cloud “Smart Shopping” platform for real-time store compliance and inventory accuracy; and Kroger, Lowe’s, Papa John’s, and Woolworths on Gemini Enterprise for CX for personalized experiences.
Why it matters strategically
The payoff isn’t only efficiency. Agentic systems collapse fragmented touchpoints — web, app, in-store, service — into one continuous experience, and they let a retailer find the right customers, personalize each journey, and automate the complex workflows behind it. The competitive edge comes from that seamlessness: when discovery, purchase, and support feel like a single conversation, the friction that costs sales disappears.
For the broader ecommerce context this sits inside, see AI in Ecommerce.
