Recently, Google, along with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, and Target, created Universal Commerce Protocol. A protocol that retailers can use in their AI agents to support product discovery, purchasing, and even support. However, I don’t think retailers understand the full impacts of agentic shopping. When viewed through the autonomous lens, this approach presents the act of shopping as friction, then removes it. Removing the shopping experience from the purchase of products will have the opposite economic effect than retailers hope for.
Companies are betting big that people will want agents to buy things on their behalf. But if this takes off, it could backfire, rewiring the shopping impulse in people’s brains and causing them to buy even less. I don’t think agentic shopping will take off because, once again, innovation is competing with culture. However, this requires a closer look.
Innovation Failures
One of the big reasons innovations fail has nothing to do with a technology’s capabilities and everything to do with the individuals building it not understanding people and culture. A perfect example of this is the vacation agent.
I’ve made fun of the vacation agent before. A nonsensical idea that could only be dreamed up by someone locked away in a room, having no idea what a vacation is. The big point is that the planning is part of the vacation. People don’t view researching activities for a vacation as a burden. It’s part of the fun.
These proposed innovations conflict with culture, which is why I predict that OpenAI’s device will fail. Introducing a device without a screen in a screen-based culture. Here again, we have people thinking it will be different. Sure, innovations come along that break the culture, but they have to be overwhelmingly compelling.
Now, the wonderful folks of Silicon Valley are here to give us agentic shopping, something that nobody actually wants. Every step of the way, proving yet again that they not only don’t understand humans but also don’t understand existing technology.
Shopping Technology
Let’s start with technology. We already have technology today that allows people to check prices to get the best deals. Whether it be flights, hotels, or products. In the US, you are bombarded with Trivago commercials while watching television. Browsers also save address and payment details, and you have options like Apple Pay to make the checkout process even more painless. The friction that’s left is much of what people find enjoyable and what retailers find necessary. (More on this shortly.)
It’s true that people today are using AI as a research tool on products, or at least there is no reason to think they aren’t. After all, they are using AI to self-diagnose their medical conditions. So, there’s no reason to think they aren’t also using it to research the products they may purchase. Companies view the purchase as purely the last step, connecting the dots, if you will. But there’s a big difference between connecting the final dots when a human is doing research and making decisions, and when an autonomous shopping agent does so.
Shopping
The joys of shopping come from outside the technical workflow. Simply put, shopping is fun for people, and our economy depends on that. But what people fail to realize is that shopping with autonomous agents isn’t shopping at all. You’ve amputated the impulse and transformed a fun experience into a purely utilitarian one by viewing shopping as friction. However, even though shopping seems simple, there are complexities that confound the autonomous shopping experience. Let’s start with price.
Shopping with autonomous agents isn’t shopping at all.
Is buying the cheapest thing really the best? Price is purely a number, easy to sort and prioritize. However, thinking that product selection is a matter of price is fooling yourself. What if you don’t get the cheapest thing for a month? What if the company has a bad habit of poorly packaging products? What if the company has poor support? The follow-up questions are endless. It’s true, you could try to account for these countless variables based on personal preference in the agent, but at some point, it becomes too tedious and varies from product to product.
In some cases, even when shopping for the same product, you might prefer the markings, such as the wood grain pattern, on one product over another, even though they are identical. The list here can be endless, and this choice is only for selecting between different options from the same vendor.
Often, you aren’t comparing apples to apples but apples to oranges, and you’re trying to decide between them. Similar products from different vendors or even different formats. For example, when choosing your next vehicle, you might be deciding between a car and a truck. Both vehicles are apples and oranges. In many cases, you might not be able to explain exactly why you made the choice you did.
Nobody likes dealing with salespeople at car dealerships, but browsing different interiors and options is actually fun. But don’t take my word for it, take our entire economy as proof. Advertisements are purely the bait. The hook comes when the browsing starts.
When purchasing services, it becomes even more complex. “Book the cheapest plumber for Tuesday” isn’t a prompting for success. However, let’s keep the conversation on products.
There is still tedium in the shopping process, and edge cases may emerge. For example, I think the idealized view of agentic shopping is something like this:
“Put together five dinners for the week based on my preferences and order all of the ingredients. Have them delivered on Monday.”
I can see where some would find this attractive. Grocery shopping is a far more utilitarian shopping activity than other forms of shopping. However, I’m far too picky about my ingredients, and I’d never trust a stranger to choose an apple or an onion for me. Actually, I’m far too picky about everything, so the question is: are picky consumers the norm or the outlier? Maybe dinners are the exception, but generalized technology rarely stays confined to specific use cases, and enough edge cases are needed to push it into mainstream use.
Will people use agents to outsource the shopping experience? Maybe. But technology choices like this are all about trade-offs, and none of those trade-offs are being considered, especially by retailers. Let’s talk about those now.
Manipulation and Gaming
The more automation is applied in the shopping experience, the more it opens the door to manipulation and gaming. It won’t be the best product vendors and products resorting to dirty tricks. Just like today, people have manipulated search engine optimization (SEO) to rank higher in search results. It’s never the best content at the top, but the people who used the right words to game the algorithm. At least with search engines, all of the content is visible, and we can tell what’s garbage. With an agent, it’s not only invisible to the user but also costs them money.
It’s never the best content at the top.
Of course, this opens the door to scammers as well, giving them new ways to exploit people. Generative AI is highly manipulable, and it’s extremely unlikely that scammers will not find unique ways to exploit these agents. Scammers are typically one step ahead, and it’s likely that the techniques they use will be exploited by marketers and advertisers.
Negative Economic Impacts
By optimizing the purchasing experience, AI agents remove the friction, in this case, known as shopping. The result could create devastating economic impacts. By removing the joy of shopping and turning purchasing into a utilitarian activity, this could cause people to buy fewer things or focus only on necessities. Our entire economy is based on people buying things they want, not necessarily things they need.
Removing the friction from purchasing may seem productive when viewed purely in terms of optimization, and if the trend picks up, there may be a short-term spike as people test the approach and impulse-buy items. However, this won’t last. The use of agents could rewire the brain’s reward system in a way that’s devastating for businesses.
Agentic shopping also removes a vital metric for tech companies, time on platform. More time on platform means more viewing ads for other products that customers may buy or encountering other products that are more preferable. The point of agentic shopping is to avoid time on platform altogether. Advertisers won’t be happy. They’ll insist that agents be further enshitified adding friction to the shopping process, possibly by adding ads or other interventions.
Adding friction to the shopping experience is actually preferable for companies. There’s a reason your local grocery store decides to rearrange the products periodically. It’s not to optimize the store, it’s to un-optimize it. The additional friction of walking around the store leads to additional purchases.
If the shopping impulse gets rewired in people’s brains, this could lead to devastating economic impacts. If I were someone who hated capitalism and wanted to see it fall, I’d be a huge fan of agentic shopping. It would be ironic if the innovations created to build more capital end up being its downfall. Technology has a powerful impact on humanity and can transform or destroy culture. Just look at Gutenberg, television, radio, the Internet, etc., as examples.
Conclusion
Companies are investing in technology that may cause their demise, driven by the fear of leaving revenue streams on the table. It’s that simple. They don’t want to be left behind. The irony is that the search for additional revenue may lead people to buy less.
Ultimately, I don’t think agentic shopping will take off. The shopping impulse ingrained in our culture is too strong, but if it does, the unintended consequences may have the opposite effect. In an attempt to get people to buy more, by removing the friction, they buy less.