Retailgentic | Consumer Behavior & Retail Trend

Scot Wingo | Retail Trends Analyst

Retailgentic explores consumer behavior and retail trends to help brands and retailers innovate. Join Scot Wingo for expert insights, actionable news, and ecommerce innovation strategies to navigate the future of retail and agentic commerce.

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#58
June 30 · 41 min
OLLY Agentic Commerce Optimization: MarTech & Digital Compliance Director Jennifer Peters On Building an AI Foundation the Right Way
In this episode, we sit down with Jennifer Peters, Director of DTC, MarTech & Digital Compliance at OLLY, on building an AEO foundation the right way: FAQs and catalog attributes, measuring agentic visibility, and staying human-centered in a regulated CPG world. We start with a Shopify “side quest”, how a self-taught developer ended up in AI god mode with Claude and MCP, before getting into what OLLY actually is and why a brand that does most of its revenue in-store suddenly cares so much about its website. Jennifer has been quietly building one of the most grounded, real-world Agentic Commerce playbooks we've heard on the show. She shares the basics done tightly and gives a clear-eyed take on what's worth investing in while the ground shifts week to week. It’s a grounded, refreshingly un-hyped conversation about building for the agentic era without losing your head, or your customers. Hit play. Highlights: The cold-resource, high-impact win: Jennifer on catalog feed enhancement. The FAQ slam dunk: OLLY added FAQs to its PDPs using content already on the page, just repackaged into bite-sized chunks. LLMs love the format, and so do humans. AEO is just good SEO: Clean up your schemas, clean up your data structure, and do the things that are good for your brand anyway. Attributes Google never asked for: A partner ingests OLLY’s public catalog and pushes back AI-ready attributes, none of them customer-facing. The website is now the point of entry: A site that was “7 or 8% of the business” is now the brand authority source agents go to first, for OLLY’s own site, Walmart’s Sparky, and Amazon’s Rufus. Trust but verify: OLLY triangulates recommendations across Profound, Contentsquare, and Envive. If all three flag the same thing, it’s probably worth acting on. Don’t “do AI to do AI”: “We’re not changing the goals because we have AI. We’re keeping the goals and just doing a better job getting to them.” Same OKRs, just faster. Fix the un-AI basics first: Connect your DAM, your creative stack, and your marketing stack before you try to sprinkle AI magic on top. Scot adds that AI can be the excuse to finally get it prioritized. The AI bubble in the bubble: From San Francisco, Jennifer on the coming counterculture: “No AI in our creative” as a selling point, growing data center backlash, and Ronny Chieng’s Harvard commencement speech. Jennifer is exactly the kind of hands-on practitioner this show exists to find: strategic, tactical, and refreshingly honest about what’s real and what’s noise. We’ll have to get her back in a year to see what other magical (and weird) things she’s figured out. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open — lowest resource, highest impact 00:21 Welcome to Retailgentic 01:36 Scot's intro: a real practitioner doing the work 04:13 Welcome, Jennifer Peters 05:20 Jennifer's background: agency, Cokesbury, OLLY 06:51 Becoming a self-taught Shopify developer 07:56 Side quest: Claude, MCP, and AI "god mode" 11:34 What is OLLY? The square-bottle homeland 12:18 Inside the DTC + MarTech role 13:15 Why the website is now the point of entry 16:21 Jennifer's agentic commerce journey begins 17:48 Start with the basics: AEO is just good SEO 18:21 FAQs on PDPs — the easy slam dunk 19:48 Catalog feed enhancement & digital attributes 21:52 Profound and the AEO vendor landscape 23:57 Panel data: "super sus" 24:42 Trust but verify across tools 25:45 The Reddit problem 27:14 Bazaarvoice and review syndication 28:44 Don't skip the un-AI basics 30:20 Measuring impact without getting fooled 31:31 Same OKRs, AI just gets there faster 35:40 Does it leak into Walmart & Target? 37:48 Sharing content across channels 40:06 What's next: AI backlash and counterculture 42:37 Where to find Jennifer & outro 👉 Connect with Jennifer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-peters-3bbb6220/ 👉 Learn more about Olly: https://www.olly.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
#57
June 24 · 33 min
Announcing RetailPlaybook: New Channel (Newsletter+Pod) Focused on ACO for Amazon/Alexa, Walmart/Sparky and Target/TSA
Scot Wingo sits down with Andrew Bell, ReFiBuy's new VP of Research and host of the new RetailPlaybook channel, for a deep dive on Alexa for Shopping, Amazon's patent playbook, and what agentic commerce optimization looks like across Amazon, Walmart, and Target. This is a launch episode. We're announcing two things at once: Andrew Bell joining ReFiBuy as VP of Research, and the debut of RetailPlaybook. Going forward Andrew hosts Retail Playbook himself, but for episode one Scot jumped in to introduce the channel and interview Andrew in person. It's airing here on Retailgentic as a crossover. Highlights: • 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗔𝗖𝗢 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸-𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰: "Good ACO on Amazon means optimizing for Alexa for Shopping, while also keeping the basic mechanics of SEO" — two distinct layers in symbiotic union, and a different playbook for every marketplace. • 𝟭𝟬𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘀: Amazon just announced its shopping agent (the artist formerly known as Rufus, now Alexa for Shopping) is reaching roughly 100 million people. • 𝟲𝟬% 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘁: Andrew is seeing conversion rates climb ~60% on product pages in particular. • 𝗔𝗺𝗮𝘇𝗼𝗻'𝘀 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲: ~$400B in counted revenue, with true GMV likely north of $600B once you account for third-party sales. • 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗮: Alexa for Shopping runs on Claude, Amazon's own Nova, and custom models — and the question that matters is "is your product being reasoned through?" • 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹: Andrew frames each marketplace like a different era of basketball, Jordan's two-pointer game vs. today's spread, zone-defense, three-point era. Different era, different playbook. • 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗔𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗡𝘀: Andrew studied Ancient Greek and preaching, then self-taught business by reading every book on the Barnes & Noble shelf over six months. • 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆: Andrew reads Amazon's granted patents every Tuesday (and non-granted ones Thursday), scoring each on a levels 1–5 framework because "patents are Amazon's playbook of the future." • 𝗗𝘂𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗨𝗖𝗣 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀: Andrew thinks Amazon joined the universal commerce protocol to publish its data outward; Scot thinks they'll pull UCP inward. They agree to see who's right. A new channel, a new voice, and a host who reads Amazon patents for fun. If you sell on Amazon, Walmart, or Target, as a brand or a third-party seller, this is the playbook you'll want open. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 01:02 Scot introduces the new podcast 02:39 In studio — Retailgentic x Retail Playbook, first time meeting IRL 03:06 Andrew joins ReFiBuy as VP of Research + channel launch 04:13 The vision for Retail Playbook (and how it differs from Retailgentic) 05:54 "ACO everywhere" — answer engines vs. retailer-hosted agents 06:09 Amazon's scale: $400B+ and 100M Rufus users 06:55 60% conversion lift; vertical + horizontal agents; built on Claude and Nova 08:34 Why playbooks work — the Jordan-vs-LeBron era model 11:48 "Christopher Nolan style" — rewinding to Andrew's story 12:02 Andrew's background: Ancient Greek, Bible school, self-taught 12:23 Touch of Class: $100K/mo to $4M, 1,500 pages by hand 13:00 GPT store, tens of thousands of sellers, 1,000 ad campaigns 15:08 NFPA: unauthorized resellers and 3x buy box 16:25 "Amazon Science Made Simple" — patents as source of truth 18:08 Patent Tuesday and the levels 1–5 framework 19:07 Use-case language and predicting the Alexa–Rufus fusion 20:51 How Alexa for Shopping ranks: 100 → 30 → the best 5–8 22:39 Full autonomy: price-trigger auto-buy 23:18 Sparky goes live on the web — and where Walmart lags 25:35 The Death Star flywheel and Amazon's selection obsession 27:34 Shop Direct and the dueling UCP theories 28:53 ChatGPT's 20% commerce intent and the horizontal flank 30:49 Back to Retail Playbook: the first Substack and query-planning optimization 32:13 Where to follow Andrew + outro 👉 Connect with Andrew Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-bell-540403275/ 👉 Learn more about RetailPlaybook: www.retailplaybook.ai 🧠 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
#56
June 16 · 55 min
Ads in the Answer Engine: Roger Dunn, CCO, Thrad on Agentic Commerce, ChatGPT Ads & the Snowflake Economy
Roger Dunn has watched retail media grow up from the agency side (Mediacom, GroupM, WPP), the tech side (he launched Criteo's retail media business in Australia), and the brand side (a global retail media role at Diageo, home of Johnnie Walker, Guinness, and Baileys). Now he's Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Thrad, a Silicon Valley startup building the ad infrastructure for LLMs, "ChatGPT ads, but for everyone else." In this episode, Roger and Scot get into where advertising actually lives inside answer engines, what's working today, and how brands should think about showing up when shopping stops looking like a search box. Highlights: What Thrad is building: both the supply side (helping retailers and chatbots monetize conversational surfaces) and a self-serve buy side where brands can run ads across existing AI inventory globally, not just in the four countries where ChatGPT ads have launched. The new ad formats: sponsored messages, sponsored prompts, polling ads, and product carousels, plus the steady stream of formats Google unveiled at Google Marketing Live. AI-native campaigns: how Thrad turns a URL, a brief, or a prompt into keyword, prompt, and dynamically generated persona targeting, and why creative (human faces beat a bare logo) is where the human edge still lives. What ChatGPT ads look like right now: CPCs roughly in the $1–$5 range, and why the early “hot mess vs. holy grail” takes are both missing the point. Roger’s definition of agentic commerce: not a robot doing the final click, but AI shaping every stage of the journey: discovery, comparison, price, review synthesis. The state of the field: Gemini’s full-court press, Perplexity’s Comet browser, Meta routing UCP checkout into Instagram, the Shopify question Wall Street keeps asking, and where Anthropic/Claude might (or might not) play. Down Under as a test lab: Woolworths’ Olive, Bunnings’ Buddy, a duopoly retail market, and why Australia keeps getting the pilots. The advice brands actually need: start small (think $10–20K in a market) but start; get out of “keyword jail”; and the analogy that lands it: keywords are ice cubes, prompts are snowflakes. A few uniform ice cubes everyone fights over, versus infinite unique prompts where a challenger brand can finally own its wedge. This is a genuinely useful tour of the side of agentic commerce most of us squint at, ads, from someone who has built the playbook three times over. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 02:00 Scot's intro — who is Roger Dunn? 05:17 Conversation begins — live from Sydney 06:47 Roger's backstory — UK to Australia, the agency years 08:00 Criteo, Epsilon, and a global retail media role at Diageo 09:05 What Thrad is — ads inside LLMs 09:38 Why retail media is "the nirvana of marketing" 11:13 SSP, DSP, self-serve — and ChatGPT ads in just 4 countries 17:58 The new ad formats: sponsored prompts, polling ads, product carousels 19:53 AI-native campaigns — URLs, briefs, and dynamic personas 22:30 Real ChatGPT ad numbers — CPCs and why human faces win 24:30 Roger's definition of agentic commerce 27:05 OpenAI's $100B ad target 27:55 Answer engines, product cards, and checkout in Australia 29:13 The state of the arena — ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta, Perplexity, Apple 30:57 The UCP checkout in Instagram and the Shopify squeeze 32:50 Inside the Australian market — duopolies, Temu, and Shein 35:52 Will Anthropic/Claude ever do commerce? 38:55 Retailer-hosted agents — Alexa, Woolworths' Olive, Bunnings' Buddy 42:17 The top questions brands are asking Roger 48:44 Escaping "keyword jail" 50:40 Ice cubes vs. snowflakes 52:00 How challenger brands find their wedge 54:30 Where to find Roger 👉 Connect with Roger Dunn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerdunn/ 👉 Learn more about Thrad: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thrads/ 🧠 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
#55
June 11 · 45 min
Who Buys, Not Just How: Inside ShopAgentic's €1.9M Bet with Co-Founders Alexander Ringsdorff (CEO) & Kai-Thomas Krause (CPAO)
This is an exclusive first look at ShopAgentic, and we cover a lot of ground with both co-founders. First we go over the big company news, then rewind through two decades of e-commerce history that brought Alex and Kai to this moment, and why they think the ground is shifting under the entire industry. From there it’s a wide-ranging conversation about what changes when agents, not humans, become the buyers: how a commerce platform built for this era might actually work, how merchants would use it, and where payments, protocols, and front ends are all heading. It’s part founder story, part state-of-the-union on agentic commerce, and part early peek at what they’re building. Hit play. 👇 Highlights: The €1.9M pre-seed: Led by Mayventures and Greenfield Capital, with around nine entrepreneur and business-angel tickets, a “US-feeling” round raised in Europe. Who buys, not just how: Kai’s framing for the whole thesis, agentic commerce is the first shift that changes the buyer itself, not just the channel. Built for humans, not agents: Why the founders believe legacy platforms, even the ones they helped build, aren’t architected for what’s coming. The ACP moment: The OpenAI release that made the duo sit down and say “this is gonna change potentially everything.” The weekend prototype: Asked for screenshots for the pitch deck, Kai vibe-coded a working demo instead, and it’s part of why investors leaned in. A squad of agents, not a platform: The product reimagined from the outcome backward, sold into innovation budgets rather than million-dollar replatforming. Ephemeral UIs: “The fast fashion of front ends” interfaces generated on the fly The protocol soup: Why UCP is “the one to go for” right now, and how ShopAgentic wants to absorb that complexity so merchants don’t have to. A wake-up call for brands: “You’re not even part of that conversation. That’s why you’re not seeing the traffic.” Debut at K5 Berlin (June 22–24): Their first time on the trade-show circuit, including a business-user AI hackathon. Two founders who've lived through every era of e-commerce software, now betting the next one gets rebuilt for agents. Whether you run a brand wondering where your traffic went or you're just curious what a platform "born agentic" looks like, this one's a glimpse into the future. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 04:21 The big news: a €1.9M pre-seed 06:07 How the round came together (the inbound snowball) 07:54 Alex's background: age 14, Magento, CouchCommerce 10:09 Meeting Stephan Schambach and building NewStore 11:35 The German e-commerce family tree 13:27 Kai's background: Metro, robotics, commercetools 16:19 From SaaS to open source to composable 17:30 Why agentic needs a new platform — the ACP moment 20:28 The founding story (and a little Guinness) 22:07 The weekend prototype that sold investors 25:43 How agentic commerce is actually different 26:04 The "squad of agents" vision 27:59 Dashboard, chatbox, and voice for merchants 30:30 Vibe coding, Lovable, Visa, and ephemeral UIs 32:30 Stablecoins and cross-border payments 34:48 x402, MPP, micropayments, and the local-agent explosion 37:07 Debut at K5 Berlin (and a hackathon) 38:17 The agent OS and guardrails 39:09 Navigating the protocol soup: UCP, ACP, AP2 42:00 Who should be an early merchant 44:14 Launching agentic-first 44:48 LinkedIn, shopagentic.com, and wrap-up 👉 Connect with Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderringsdorff/ 👉 Connect with Kai: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaithomaskrause/ 👉 Learn more about ShopAgentic: https://www.shopagentic.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
#54
June 4 · 48 min
Enterprise or Easy? Salesforce Says Both: DOUBLE Pod with Nitin Mangtani and Lennart Stevens from Salesforce
This week we have a rare double header. Scheduling conflicts meant no three-way interview, so we sat down with two Salesforce leaders back to back, both there to unpack the company’s big June release, headlined by the launch of its newest platform, Storefront Next. First up is Nitin, who walks through the full sweep of the June release and makes the case for why, taken together, it's Salesforce's biggest commerce release in five years. Then Lennart takes us deeper into the agentic guts, one of our favorite parts. The two interviews rhyme in one important way: both leaders insist that agentic commerce on your owned-and-operated channels matters just as much as showing up in ChatGPT and Gemini. As Nitin puts it, skipping your own shopper agent is like the old days of saying "I participate on Google Shopping, but I don't have search on my website." Highlights Biggest release in five years: Nitin frames the June release as Salesforce Commerce’s biggest swing since he arrived. “It’s 2026, let’s combine the two together”: The forced choice between enterprise-grade and easy-to-launch is a false distinction that can be engineered away. The acquisition cheat code: Rather than spend five years building modern AI search in-house, Salesforce bought Cimulate. It now powers every shopper agent prompt, and it’s available even to non-Commerce Cloud customers. “This code should be written by Claude prompting and not by you”: Storefront Next ships you to the 90% point out of the box; the last 10% is vibe-coded. Migration utilities plus Claude Code shrink what used to be a capital-T front-end project. Live in under 30 minutes: Lennart’s demo path: name the storefront, connect a code repo, click go, and you’re previewing a high-performance site in under half an hour. You need your own Rufus AND to play off-site: Both guests hammer the distinction between agentic commerce on owned-and-operated channels and syndicated commerce via UCP on Gemini, OpenAI, and beyond. One without the other is like being on Google Shopping with no search box on your own site. Focus is magic: Nitin consolidated 20 initiatives down to 4–5, runs two-week iteration cycles instead of two-year PRDs, and credits that discipline (plus AI-native development) for the release’s scope. Advisor and confidant: Lennart’s favorite anecdote… a jewelry brand found customers were more comfortable asking an agent “how big should the ring be, how much should it cost?” than asking a friend. Checkout wisdom from Nitin: Stop offering eight payment options. “Just put Apple Pay on your PDP” four options max, on a good day. The era of choosing between enterprise and easy looks like it's ending and the agents are coming either way. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 01:43 Scot's intro: a rare Salesforce double header 04:17 Part 1: Nitin Mangtani, EVP & GM of Salesforce Commerce 05:40 The Cimulate acquisition story 06:50 Inside the June release: search, Storefront Next, merchandising, POS, OMS 10:00 Four kinds of customers, one platform 11:50 Migration, Claude Code, and the 90/10 rule 14:10 Shopper agents: owned & operated vs. syndicated 17:05 How Cimulate is baked in search and agentic collapse into one 19:05 "Enterprise or easy" is a false choice 20:15 Focus, two-week iterations, and acquisitions as a cheat code 23:10 ChatGPT leaving checkout and the state of agentic commerce 26:10 Part 2: Lennart Stevens, VP of Product, Agentforce Commerce 27:15 Lennart's background: two decades on the partner side 29:15 Where Storefront Next fits in the Salesforce lineup 32:45 The unlock: a storefront live in under 30 minutes 35:20 React, Tailwind, shadcn + MCP server and 40+ skills 38:05 Design partners and the adoption curve 40:55 AI readiness: e-commerce leaders' #1 concern 43:50 The shopper agent as advisor and confidant 44:45 Agentic merchandising and the Figma unlock 👉 Connect with Nitin Mangtani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/ 👉 Connect with Nitin Mangtani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennart-stevens/ 👉 Learn more about Storefront Next: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/storefront-next/ 🧠 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
#53
May 28 · 26 min
“We Have Definitely Been Cooking”: Ashish Gupta, Google’s VP of Merchant Shopping, on Everything Google Just Shipped at GML
May 20th at Google Marketing Live, right before my high-level strategic chat with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google (you can read/listen to that one here), I got to sit down with Ashish Gupta, VP & GM of Merchant Shopping at Google. If the Nick Fox conversation was the 30,000-ft strategic view of where Google is taking AI Mode, AIO, and the answer engine, this one with Ashish is the exact opposite. It’s the on-the-ground tactical roadmap for merchants. Ashish is literally one of the people building the thing, and he’s telling you what to do about it before holiday. This interview was recorded right after his fireside chat with Augustina Sartori at Google HQ. On that panel, he laid out the 4 things merchants should do right now: Product feeds Data strength AI campaigns, Agentic infrastructure (i.e., UCP). We get into all four. In this interview we discuss: The 6 new conversational attributes — just launched, live now in the supplemental feed (FAQs, related items, popularity rank, document links, additional variants, item group). Why they exist, how to use them, and the “best sales associate in your store” analogy for how AI surfaces are now expected to behave UCP’s expansion into new verticals — food delivery and travel. Why now, and why the “U” in Universal Commerce Protocol is doing real work Loyalty in UCP via Google account linking — your Ulta $10 reward shows up at checkout. Critical for merchants who don’t allow guest checkout Data strength — bringing first-party loyalty data into Gemini / AI Mode surfaces so loyal customers see more of the brands they love AI Max & P-Max and the new ad formats showing up across AI surfaces (and YouTube) AI Performance Insights coming to Merchant Center — the new Share of Voice metric, why the funnel doesn’t behave like a normal funnel (it can actually widen deeper in), and how Google is moving from a “click/keyword” company to an “answer engine” company The keyword vs. long-tail question — in an answer engine world, is there even such a thing as a “popular search term” anymore? (Ashish’s answer is interesting) What’s neat about doing these back-to-back is you get both layers in one day. Nick’s interview is about framing: how Google thinks about AI Mode vs. traditional Search, the Innovator’s Dilemma, the ~5 prior attempts at “transactions on Google” and why this one is different, and trust at the intersection of answer engines and AI ads. Ashish’s interview is the merchant-facing manifestation of all of that: here’s exactly what’s shipping, here’s what to put in your feed, here’s how we’ll measure you. Read both together and you get a pretty complete picture of what Google is doing with agentic commerce in 2026. Timestamps: 01:41 — Episode intro: Ashish Gupta returns, context on GML, the merchant vs. consumer org structure at Google 04:39 — Interview begins (on-site at Building 100 Bayview) 05:18 — Breaking news: the 6 new conversational attributes are live 06:32 — The "best sales associate" analogy for AI surfaces 08:09 — Popularity rank: how merchants can signal without giving away proprietary data 09:37 — Related items, additional variants, and item group attributes 11:01 — UCP expansion into new verticals (food delivery, travel) — why now 12:32 — The 4 things merchants should do: feeds, data strength, AI campaigns, agentic infrastructure 13:02 — Data strength explained: first-party loyalty data in AI surfaces 14:08 — Loyalty in UCP via Google account linking (the Ulta $10 example) 16:01 — AI campaigns: AI Max, P-Max, and showing up across AI surfaces 17:46 — New ad formats and YouTube shopping 18:04 — UCP on YouTube and what's next (Gmail?) 19:19 — AI Performance Insights & the Share of Voice metric 20:17 — Discover / Explore / Purchase: Google crosses from search engine to answer engine 21:34 — Why the AI funnel doesn't behave like a traditional funnel 23:20 — Long-tail vs. keyword: do "popular search terms" still exist in an answer-engine world? 25:05 — What Ashish is most excited about 26:06 — Outro 👉 Connect with Ashish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/ 🧠 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
#52
May 21 · 22 min
Nick Fox, Google's SVP of Knowledge and Information, Live Google Marketing Live Interview
May 20th at Google Marketing Live, I was very fortunate to be able to sit down for ~20 minutes with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google. Earlier in the day he had a fireside chat with Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief Semafor. Later that afternoon after I had time to reflect on this conversation, I had a ~20min interview with Nick. It’s not often you get to sit down with one of the top execs at a ~$5T company so I worked a lot of topics into a short time. As always, I try and approach this with you, the audience in mind. What would YOU ask? I had just completed a super tactical Agentic Commerce / UCP/Universal Checkout chat with Ashish, so for this one flipped into high-level strategic mode. In this interview we discuss: How does Nick ‘frame’ AIO/AI Mode/Gemini Will AI Mode/AIO and traditional search transition from traditional to AI Mode or will they merge, or ‘other’ down the road? Google’s had ~5 previous attempts from the Froogle era to today for ‘transactions on Google’ - why is this the moment they are getting super serious about it? Navigating the Innovator’s Dilemma Finally, managing trust at the intersection of ‘Answer engines’ and ‘AI Ads’ Timestamps: 01:45 — Scot introduces Nick Fox, Google SVP of Knowledge & Information 02:31 — “Search in the AI Era” and Google’s AI strategy 03:21 — What this interview covers: AI Mode, Gemini, ads, and commerce 04:00 — Why Google believes transactions will work this time 04:33 — The innovator’s dilemma and defending Search 05:16 — Ads, trust, and AI-generated answers 05:52 — Interview begins live from Google Marketing Live 06:23 — How Gemini is “supercharging” Google’s advertising products 06:50 — Ads inside AI Mode and agentic commerce tools 07:11 — Universal Commerce Protocol + Universal Cart 07:26 — Nick Fox on 23 years at Google and the AI era 08:07 — Why Google sees tech shifts as growth accelerators, not disruptions 08:53 — Search vs AI Overviews vs AI Mode vs Gemini explained 09:12 — Google’s “two main products”: Search and Gemini 10:16 — Reinventing the Search box for the AI era 11:01 — Will AI Mode eventually become the default? 12:10 — Google’s philosophy: combining AI + the web 13:00 — Why Google believes users still want the web 13:03 — Gemini “Spark” and agentic capabilities 13:43 — AI agents running 24/7 in the background 14:14 — Using Spark to manage complex tasks like event planning 14:50 — The future of Gemini in the agentic era 14:59 — Google as an economic engine and ad marketplace 15:42 — The innovator’s dilemma and Search resilience 16:04 — “Lean into the technology shifts” philosophy 16:52 — Why Google didn’t see AI as a business-model threat 17:17 — Google’s ad model as a marketplace between users and marketers 18:18 — Why Google Shopping is different this time 19:02 — Why AI enables better shopping confidence and discovery 19:43 — AI helping users get further down the purchase journey 20:24 — Trust, ads, and AI-generated answers 21:04 — Google’s principles for ads in AI experiences 21:31 — “Ads are clearly labeled, separate, and relevant” 21:58 — Closing thoughts and wrap-up 👉 Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickthefox/ 👉 Learn more about Google Marketing Live: https://www.googlemarketinglive.com/digital 🧠 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
#51
May 20 · 22 min
Suresh Ganapathy, Senior Director of Product, Consumer Shopping: Live Google I/O Interview
Today at Google I/O, in her part of the larger keynote, VP/GM of Ads and Commerce, Vidhya Srinivasan announced a raft of Agentic Commerce items with the anchor new feature being Universal Cart. After Vidhya’s keynote comments, I was left with these questions that I know merchants will have too: Googlers talk about Universal Cart being available on surfaces like Gmail and YouTube - what’s that actually look like IRL? What are the use cases that merchants can think about and start experimenting with? Universal Cart is coming this Summer - that’s typically June/July/August - that’s a long window in AI-time, early/mid/late Summer? I haven’t heard Google, at least the Agentic Commerce team, talk about AG2 in a while, and suddenly it popped back up in the context of the new consumer agent called Gemini Spark. What’s that all about that. Loyalty (via identity linking) was part of the UCP features announced back on March 19th (details here) but kind of missing here? Even though if you read Vidhya’s blog post very carefully it says that Universal Cart uses “loyalty information”, but it’s not like the Copilot UCP-based loyalty linkage we saw with Target back on April 22 (here if you missed it). That’s a lot of questions - I only had 30mins with Suresh, so had to pick and choose, but we covered some good ground. The good news is I have two more interviews scheduled for Wed 20th at Google Marketing Live and will work them all in. Subscribe, engage and stay tuned for more great Google I/O content coming at you all week! 👉 Connect with Suresh Ganapathy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureshsganapathy/ 👉 Learn more about Google I/O: https://io.google/2026/ 🧠 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
#50
May 14 · 50 min
Elizabeth Lachhar, EVP Americas at Rezolve AI: Is Your Ecommerce Experience Already Outdated?
In this episode, Scot sits with Elizabeth Lachhar to unpack Rezolve AI’s end-to-end agentic commerce platform, including its closed retail-trained LLM, Brainpower, and modules across search, discovery, conversational commerce, checkout, and loyalty. A lot of the agentic commerce conversation focuses on offsite experiences like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI shopping agents. But there’s another major shift happening onsite, where retailers are rethinking search, merchandising, conversational commerce, checkout, loyalty, and personalization for an AI-native world. Elizabeth brings a deep enterprise background from Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and more, and now works with retailers, brands, food service, hospitality, and B2B companies navigating this transition. Highlights Why onsite agentic commerce matters just as much as offsite AI shopping agents How Rezolve AI approaches search, merchandising, conversational commerce, checkout, loyalty, and geolocation Why closed, retail-trained LLMs may matter for hallucination, security, and enterprise trust How conversational commerce can help retailers move beyond flat, 2D ecommerce experiences Why B2B discovery is a major agentic commerce use case How loyalty, memory, and past purchases can create better personalization What retailers are asking about right now: security, compliance, fraud, ROI, and partner strategy Why Elizabeth believes agentic commerce is already here, not years away What Generation Alpha could mean for the future of shopping experiences by 2030 Agentic commerce is also about rebuilding the onsite experience so retailers can understand, personalize, transact, and convert in a world where consumers expect commerce to be faster, smarter, and more conversational. Timestamps 00:00 — Introduction to Retailgentic 01:34 — Meet Elizabeth Lacchar of Resolve AI 04:18 — Elizabeth’s background at Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and more 07:14 — Why she joined Resolve AI 09:54 — What Resolve AI does 10:32 — The end-to-end agentic commerce platform 11:29 — Quick service, geolocation, and hospitality use cases 13:25 — Search, discovery, merchandising, and visualization 15:08 — B2B catalogs and complex SKU discovery 17:12 — Why agentic commerce is different from legacy site search 18:11 — Resolve’s closed LLM, Brainpower 20:26 — Checkout, wallets, crypto, and international payments 26:02 — Loyalty, data, and the full customer lifecycle 29:50 — Brain Suite, Brain Commerce, Brain Checkout, and Brain Assist 31:09 — Resolve AI’s customer mix 34:22 — Elizabeth’s role as EVP of the Americas 35:55 — Vibe check: where retailers are in adoption 38:31 — Is agentic commerce a race to the bottom? 40:28 — Fraud, bots, security, and guardrails 42:35 — Selling agentic commerce across enterprise teams 46:26 — Predictions for holiday and 2030 49:41 — Where to learn more about Resolve AI 👉 Connect with Elizabeth Lachhar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-lachhar/ 👉 Learn more about Rezolve Ai: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airezolve/ 🧠 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
#49
May 7 · 48 min
Microsoft Joins Retailgentic! Michele Fisher & Atanu Ghosh on Copilot, Agentic Commerce, Loyalty, Ads, and Does Conversational Discovery Changes Everything?
In this episode, we sit down with Michele Fisher (Global Director, Business Strategy for Retail & CPG) and Atanu Ghosh (Director of Agentic Commerce & AI Innovation), who sit at the intersection of Azure AI, Copilot, and real-world retail and brand Agentic Commerce implementations. This conversation dives into how Microsoft is thinking about agentic commerce as a full operating model shift, not just a feature or channel. From Copilot shopping to data infrastructure to ads inside LLMs, the discussion connects the dots between: Highlights Conversational discovery is fundamentally different from search: The way people talk about brands inside AI systems looks nothing like traditional keyword behavior, and most companies have zero visibility into it. Agentic commerce is not one thing, it’s an operating model shift: Microsoft defines it broadly: agents participating in discovery, decision-making, and transactions, not just checkout. Copilot + catalog + data = the new commerce stack Ads are changing from persuasion to evaluation: Agents don’t care about creative. They evaluate structured data, trust signals, and relevance. Loyalty becomes infrastructure, not a program The “frontier firm” is the North Star: A future where humans and agents work together across workflows, not just AI acting as an assistant. Protocols like UCP matter more than people realize: Open standards enable discoverability across surfaces and prevent fragmentation in agent-driven ecosystems. The funnel is collapsing If your brand is still thinking about traffic as the starting point, you’re already behind. In an agentic world, discovery happens before you ever see the user, and increasingly, without them. Timestamps 00:00 – Why brands have zero visibility into conversational discovery 01:50 – Scot’s “Big 6” podcast goal and Microsoft joins the list 04:00 – Michelle & Atanu backgrounds + roles at Microsoft 10:00 – What agentic commerce actually means (and why definitions vary) 14:00 – Microsoft’s agentic commerce stack: Copilot, agents, data layer 18:00 – The “Frontier Firm” and human + agent workflows 20:00 – UCP, protocols, and why openness matters 23:00 – Loyalty, identity, and friction in agent checkout 28:00 – Ads in agentic commerce: from persuasion to evaluation 33:00 – First-party data vs. conversational behavior data 39:00 – Why most retailers aren’t ready (and what they need first) 45:00 – The real blocker: operating models, not technology 46:30 – Where to learn more + how leaders are consuming information now 👉 Connect with Michele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelekfisher/ 👉 Connect with Atanu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingai/ 👉 Learn more about Microsoft in AI: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/the-future-of-ai-harnessing-ai-for-e-commerce---personalized-shopping-agents/4386980 🧠 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
#48
April 30 · 50 min
Stephan Ritter, Director Commerce Transformation Deloitte, EU: Agentic Commerce in Europe, The New Battleground is Discovery, The Importance of Product Data and Loyalty!
In this episode of Retailgentic, Stephan breaks down how agentic commerce is evolving globally, with a particular focus on Europe’s rapid adoption. We explore why AI-driven shopping is accelerating faster than previous technology shifts, how brands are already losing visibility without realizing it, and what practical steps companies can take today to stay competitive. From product data strategy to protocol wars to the future of loyalty, this conversation offers a clear view of where commerce is heading next. Highlights Discovery is the new battleground: If your product is not readable, trustworthy, and rich in context for AI agents, it will not be recommended. Agentic commerce starts before checkout: The most important shift is happening in discovery, comparison, and decision-making, not the final transaction. Europe is moving differently, not slower: Adoption among younger consumers in markets like Germany is already very high, with many using AI in shopping workflows. Product data is now infrastructure: Years of optimizing for search engines are being replaced by the need to structure data for AI systems. Loyalty and identity are becoming core systems: Future commerce will depend heavily on how well brands manage identity, value, and customer relationships across AI ecosystems. Protocols are evolving fast: Systems like UCP and MCP are shaping how agents interact with product data, pricing, and checkout layers. Small experiments already create visibility gains: Even limited API exposure or structured data improvements can increase inclusion in AI-driven recommendations. Agentic commerce is accelerating existing problems: Many of today’s challenges, like poor data quality and disconnected systems, have existed for years but are now becoming urgent. Agentic commerce is already reshaping how products are discovered today, and the brands that adapt fastest will define the next era of retail. Timestamps 00:00 – Opening and overview of agentic commerce 02:00 – Who Stefan Ritter is and his background 05:00 – Why agentic commerce adoption is happening faster than mobile 09:00 – What agentic commerce actually means 11:00 – Human vs autonomous decision-making 13:00 – Why context is replacing keywords 16:00 – State of agentic commerce in Europe 20:00 – Data quality and infrastructure challenges 23:00 – AI platforms and protocol landscape 26:00 – Loyalty, identity, and authentication of agents 28:00 – The three opportunity spaces for brands 32:00 – How AI changes product storytelling 36:00 – Events, ecosystem, and European perspective 37:00 – Deloitte research and discovery battleground 39:00 – Retail media and monetization challenges 42:00 – Practical roadmap for brands 46:00 – The future of agentic commerce 49:00 – Closing thoughts and where to follow Stefan 👉 Connect with Stephan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanritter/ 👉 Learn more about Deloitte: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deloitte/ 🧠 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
#47
April 23 · 44 min
Krystina Gustafson: Innovating at the Intersection of Content, AI, Agentic Commerce and Digital Retail Conferences...
This episode goes beyond surface-level AI hype and into how retail organizations are actually responding. Krystina shares what she’s hearing from operators, board members, and data leaders and why the biggest risk right now is moving in the wrong direction. At the same time, we explore how agentic commerce is reshaping traffic, discovery, and brand relationships and what that means for the future of ecommerce. Highlights AI is forcing a full end-to-end transformation of retail Many companies are prioritizing the wrong AI initiatives, focusing on hype instead of P&L impact A growing concern: “dark” or untracked AI-driven traffic is already impacting performance Data strategy is becoming a core battleground: What do you give AI platforms? What do you get back? Do CRMs need to evolve entirely? The real unlock for AI shopping is complex, multi-step purchases (travel, events, planning) The industry is early, but pressure from boards and declining traffic is accelerating adoption The future of retail will be defined by who applies it to the right problems. ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 — The future of retail data + AI uncertainty 00:47 — Retailgentic intro 03:10 — Kristina Gustafson’s background (CNBC → Shoptalk → RetailClub) 08:02 — Why RetailClub exists: AI needs a verticalized event 10:00 — From “retreat” to “festival” 12:00 — Intimacy vs scale in events 17:00 — What “festival format” actually means 20:00 — RetailClub themes: full AI transformation of retail 26:00 — How Kristina tracks AI trends (75%+ of her time) 28:00 — AI prioritization problem inside companies 29:00 — Data, CRMs, and “dark agentic traffic” 30:00 — Traffic decline + board pressure 36:30 — Agentic commerce: what actually works 38:00 — Why brands won’t fully disappear 40:00 — RetailClub details + closing 👉 Connect with Krystina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/ 👉 Learn more about RetailClub: https://retailclub.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
#46
April 14 · 37 min
Vertical Agentic Commerce: Grocery Innovation from Delectable AI: Joseph Lee, CEO and Co-founder Shares Details...
In this episode, we go deep into what agentic commerce actually looks like in a real-world vertical, and why grocery may be one of the most important battlegrounds. We walk through the shift from “tools that help you shop” to systems that shop for you, and how that fundamentally changes everything from discovery to monetization. We also unpack the tension between grocers and platforms like Instacart, the rise of retail media networks, and why owning your data, and your customer relationship, may matter more than ever in an AI-driven world. Highlights Regional grocers are losing both data and margin to platforms like Instacart Agentic commerce shifts grocery from manual planning → “do it for me” automation Delectable combines food intelligence + shopper intelligence + real-time inventory AI closes the gap between inspiration (TikTok/recipes) → instant cart creation Vertical AI beats horizontal models with better accuracy, speed, and cost efficiency Grocery e-commerce hasn’t saved time, until now Retail media networks are massive, but broken by middlemen and inefficiency Agentic advertising creates unlimited, contextual ad inventory The future of grocery is about owning discovery, not renting it If you want to understand where agentic commerce gets real, beyond theory and into infrastructure, this is one to pay attention to. ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 — Who owns grocery discovery today 02:05 — Intro to Delectable AI 04:00 — Joe’s background in enterprise commerce 10:00 — Why grocery (and why now) 12:50 — The Agentic Experience Platform explained 14:30 — Why grocery e-commerce hasn’t saved time 15:50 — “Do it for me” shopping vs tools 17:00 — Retail media inefficiencies and opportunity 19:00 — The shopper journey (TikTok → cart) 22:00 — Fundraising + early traction 26:00 — Vertical vs horizontal AI debate 30:00 — Instacart, data ownership, and margins 32:00 — Why vertical AI wins (accuracy, speed, cost) 34:30 — What’s next for Delectable 👉 Connect with Joseph Lee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephchiahsunlee/ 👉 Learn more about Delectable AI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/delectable-ai/ 🧠 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
#45
April 9 · 47 min
Arjun Bhargava, CEO of Rye: Building Checkout for AI + Amazon & on OpenClaw 🦞 and Agentic Commerce
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 🧠 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

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