Trends in E-Commerce Aggregation

I built my first Agentic Commerce startup before LLMs existed at scale.  I’ve been tracking the agentic commerce & payments space closely now and there's some interesting stuff happening right now. The big players are going in different directions. Shopify is doubling down on their Sidekick AI for merchant automation. Amazon is quietly building out their fulfillment agents behind the scenes. And then you have newer companies focusing specifically on customer service automation for e-commerce. But here's what I'm seeing as the real trend: it's not just about chatbots anymore. The companies that are winning are building agents that can actually take actions - process returns, update inventory, coordinate with suppliers, even make purchasing decisions within set parameters. The most interesting work is happening in the mid-market space. Small businesses can't afford custom solutions, and enterprise has their own teams. But mid-market retailers are perfect for these agentic commerce tools. I'm seeing three main categories emerging: 1) Customer service agents that can actually resolve issues (not just answer questions) 2) Inventory management agents that predict and auto-reorder stock 3) Marketing agents that can adjust campaigns based on real-time performance data Here are some other patterns I’m seeing that are using AI across entire customer journey: Product Discovery: AI agents are now scanning millions of product reviews, social mentions, and search trends to predict what customers want before they know it themselves. Dynamic Pricing: Gone are the days of static price tags. AI is analyzing competitor pricing, inventory levels, demand patterns, and customer behavior in real-time. e-commerce sites are updating prices thousands of times per day. Fraud Detection: Traditional rule-based systems caught maybe 50-60% of fraudulent transactions. Modern AI systems are hitting 85%+ accuracy while reducing false positives that frustrate legitimate customers. Payment Optimization: AI is figuring out which payment method to suggest to each customer, when to retry failed payments, and how to route transactions for the lowest fees and highest success rates. Customer Support: Payment issues used to require human agents. Now AI can resolve 80% of payment disputes, refund requests, and billing questions without human intervention. The companies moving fast on this are seeing dramatic improvements in conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency. The ones waiting will be falling behind quickly.

The next wave of eCommerce isn’t a channel shift—it’s a mindset shift It’s not about adding more SKUs. It’s about deploying agents to do the work for you. And Amazon just showed us what that future looks like. Here’s the quiet rollout everyone should be watching: Amazon’s “Buy for Me” feature just launched. No commission. No inventory risk. No need to leave the app. Just AI agents shopping on your behalf—across Amazon and 3P sites. This isn’t a feature drop. It’s a signal: The shopping journey no longer ends with Amazon—it starts with Amazon’s agent. Let’s break it down for the kids in the back.. The Old Way of Thinking Consumers browse → compare → check out. Retailers fight for the last click. The New Playbook AI agents collapse that path. They find, compare, and transact for the user. Amazon is becoming the AI operating system for commerce—not just the store. Why it matters: (3) 1️⃣ AI is the new interface – It’s not just ChatGPT. It’s commerce. 2️⃣ This expands reach without SKU risk – Amazon grows without holding inventory. 3️⃣ It positions Amazon as the most valuable first step – Because the agent starts there. What I’d do if I were a brand: (3) → Design (A/B test) your PDPs and product content for AI agents, not humans. → Don’t obsess over last-click. Obsess over first-query. → Rethink what “distribution” means in a world where AI does the browsing. This is the beginning of agentic commerce. It’s early 2025 (April). We’re just getting started. Ways to reach us: Pattern® (eCommerce accelerator) The CPG View (podcast) The Retail eCommerce Club (community) The eFramework (eCommerce MBA) Subscribe to The Retail Media View: 👇🏼 https://lnkd.in/etsfcm-S #amazon #aiagents #ecommerce #retailmedia #digitaltransformation #cpg #shoppinginnovation #retailtech #pattern #retailecommerceclub

On today's Wall St call with Scott Devitt, I was asked: "What would we look for as an early indicator that this Agentic trend has hit a tipping point." That's a good question that I have put more thought into and wanted to share the evidence today. I think there are two waterfalls here: o Waterfall 1: GenAI 'answer engine' adoption o Waterfall 2: GenAI adoption impacting ecommerce/retail via agentic shopping Here are 6 charts that are < 2wks old that, when you connect the dots, tell this story-> Waterfall 1: o (image 1: This one is new!) At Cannes, Cloudflare CEO blew away the audience revealing the 6 month changes in the ratio of pages crawled to visitors sent. Think of this as the ratio of bots to humans, so for example 2:1 - for every 2 bots I get a human. Because these are answer engines, opposite of traditional google (send them on fast) you want to (get them answer fast) and thus a human that has to go to the site is a bug not a feature. Google's ratio is currently 18:1 (bots up 3x in 6months as they layer in AI Overviews), and ChatGPTs is 1500:1. Anthropic is 60,000:1. Sketch out this logarithmic curve and human traffic to websites could be extinct by 2030 (Roy Rubin said as much on the Retailgentic pod) o image 3 - we see evidence from Coatue that ChatGPT usage is impacting Google o image 4 - ChatGPT fastest product to 800m MAUs (Coatue) o image 5 - OpenAI projected revenue growth 🤯 -> that's gotta come from somewhere, I think ecommerce is ripe for the picking via Agentic Shopping Waterfall 2-> o Image 2 (Barrons article) - Similarweb data shows ecommerce data had dropped ~9% What's next? Signals I'm looking for on waterfall 2: o A material decrease in the efficacy of on-retail-site ads (RMN) o Retailers changing their posture to welcome agents vs. block o Brands welcoming agents and adding more payment mechanisms to welcome them o ecommerce platforms building agentic features