How agentic AI is finding its place in retail
Agentic AI has not created the same buzz in retail as generative AI but is becoming an important enterprise tool.
The latest wave of artificial intelligence evolution, agentic AI builds upon the prescriptive capabilities of generative AI to streamline enterprise workflows even further.
Generative AI, which is based on machine learning, can create new content and ideas and create recommendations based on analysis of volumes of data in near-real-time that were previously too big to evaluate.
Agentic AI goes a step beyond by analyzing massive amounts of data in near-real-time and then automatically taking action based on the results. For example, an agentic AI pricing solution could adjust prices based on factors specific to a local store or an agentic AI chatbot could automatically issue a customer refund or flag a complaint for fraud depending on its deep-dive analysis of the situation.
Agentic AI was widely available at both the recent NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show and Shoptalk 2025 retail technology conferences, but not the dominant theme.
Instead, as AI in general becomes more an expected component of the retail enterprise, agentic is fitting right in both the front and back ends, with shopping, product recommendations, and supply chain operations emerging as three major areas where it is being applied by retailers:
Shopping
In one significant example of how retailers are streamlining the customer shopping process using agentic AI, Amazon is beta testing a new agentic AI-based shopping feature known as "Buy for Me" in its iOS and Android shopping app for a subset of U.S. customers.
When customers participating in the beta look for branded items in the search bar in the Amazon shopping app, they see relevant results from Amazon and third-party sellers in its store, and in some cases, additional relevant products from other stores in a separate section of search results labeled, "Shop brand sites directly."
Customers can link directly to these sites, or in some cases, will see a link to Buy for Me. To shop brand sites directly using Buy for Me, customers tap on an item that says Buy for Me in search results listed under "Shop brand sites directly."
They are then taken to a product detail page within the Amazon shopping app. This page provides relevant product information, similar to product detail pages for items Amazon sells.
If a customer decides to proceed with Buy for Me purchase, they tap on the Buy for Me button on the product detail page to request Amazon make the purchase from the brand retailer’s website on their behalf.
Customers are taken to an Amazon checkout page where they confirm order details, including preferred delivery address, applicable taxes and shipping fees, and payment method.
Using agentic AI capabilities, Amazon securely makes the purchase by securely providing the customer’s encrypted name, address, and payment details to complete the checkout process on the brand’s website.
Product recommendations
A new eBay agentic AI tool delivers real-time, hyper-personalized product picks and expert guidance based on a customer’s shopping preferences as they explore the eBay site.
The eBay shopping agent will show up wherever a customer is in their buying journey, either by reacting to their request or through predictive messaging inline on the page the user is visiting.
The e-commerce giant is also participating in the research preview of Operator, a new agentic AI solution from OpenAI, developer of the ChatGPT generative AI model. eBay says the collaboration will result in users being directed to eBay for “unique inventory finds.”
[READ MORE: eBay pilots agentic AI assistant]
Supply chain operations
A recent survey of more than 300 global supply chain executives from IBM and Oxford Economics reveals C-level supply chain executives are already utilizing agentic AI and have high future expectations for the technology.
More than six-in-10 (62%) survey respondents said that AI agents embedded into operational workflows accelerate speed to action, hastening decision-making, recommendations, and communications.
Seven-in-10 respondents said that by 2026, their employees will be able to drill deeper into analytics to support real-time analysis and optimization as agentic AI automates operational processes, especially in procurement and dynamic sourcing.
And three-in-four (76%) respondents said their overall process efficiency will be improved by AI agents that perform repetitive, impact-based tasks at a faster pace than people can.
