From search to delegation: agents enter the buying journey
NRF (Retail's Big Show) brings together the main players in commerce every year around the major transformations shaping the sector. The 2026 edition confirms a trend that now goes beyond a simple fad: generative AI is settling into the buying journey, with agents emerging as new intermediaries between consumers and brands.
This shift goes well beyond technology. It profoundly changes how consumers discover products, how brands gain visibility and, more broadly, how they build and maintain relationships with their customers.
For a long time, the digital journey followed a relatively linear logic: the consumer ran a search, browsed the results, visited several sites, compared offers, then made a purchase.
The rise of LLMs introduces a new logic: instead of carrying out some of these steps themselves, consumers can now delegate them to an AI. Tomorrow, they may even ask it to add the selected products directly to their cart, or to go all the way to payment, fully autonomously.
The first uses are already here. Data presented at NRF indicates that 31% of online shoppers now use generative AI in their buying journey (“Les Français sont de plus en plus nombreux à adopter l'IA pour acheter sur internet”, FEVAD 2026), in particular to search, compare or get recommendations.
A request such as “I'm looking for a pair of running shoes under €150, for three training sessions a week” can now be addressed directly to an agent. It can identify the relevant products, cross-check their characteristics, compare offers and propose a selection.
The change is major. Users no longer necessarily look for a brand or a product themselves: they express a need, and the agent takes care of exploring the offer on their behalf.
For brands, this shift creates a new visibility challenge. It is no longer only about appearing in search engine results, but about making your offer clear, reliable and relevant enough to be understood and selected by an agent. This is the whole point of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).
The rise of agents reinforces the loyalty challenge
This change of entry point has a deeper consequence: brands will lose part of the visibility they currently have on the upstream part of the journey.
When a consumer browses a site, an app or a search engine directly, the brand can observe part of their behavior: searches, visits, comparisons, abandonments… When these steps are carried out by an agent, this knowledge becomes more indirect.
If agents take on a growing share of discovery and comparison, brands have fewer opportunities to directly influence the consumer before the purchase. The ability to retain the customers they have already acquired becomes all the more strategic.
Loyalty is already at the heart of consumer expectations:
In this new context, the ability to build and maintain a lasting relationship with customers becomes even more important. Service, personalization, support, recommendations, loyalty programs and re-engagement are no longer just CRM levers: they become ways of preserving a direct relationship with the customer.
To move to agentic commerce, the fundamentals must keep up
The rise of agents necessarily means rethinking the conditions under which they will be able to work effectively. To understand an offer, compare it and make a relevant recommendation, AI must be able to rely on reliable, structured data, quality content and up-to-date information on products, prices and availability. It must also have business rules and customer knowledge rich enough to contextualize its answers and recommendations.
But understanding and recommending is not enough: the agent must also be able to act. It must be able to access the right systems, trigger the necessary processes and, eventually, execute what it recommends.
This is why agentic commerce is above all a question of operational maturity. Data, architecture, content, business processes and customer knowledge must be solid and connected enough for agents to work effectively and at scale.
For companies, the challenge is therefore as much to prepare these foundations as to decide which agents to deploy, so as to gradually integrate AI into part of their interactions, decisions and actions.
Preparing tomorrow's commerce today
Agentic commerce draws on areas of expertise that can no longer be thought of separately: AI and data, customer experience and e-commerce, architecture and operating models.
As agents take a growing place in the buying journey, companies must rethink how they design their experiences and maintain relationships with their customers. The ability to be understood, chosen and then to build a lasting relationship with the customer becomes decisive.
At Niji, we support retail players in identifying the opportunities of agentic commerce and turning them into concrete use cases and experiences.
Where does your company fit in this new buying journey? Wondering about it? Let's talk.
