Is Your Brand Built for AI Shoppers?
Agentic Commerce Brings Autonomous Agents and New Rules for Building Trust
Agentic Commerce Brings Autonomous Agents and New Rules for Building Trust
Online shopping used to feel almost recreational. Endless tabs. Review deep-dives. Impulse decisions disguised as “research.”
Now AI wants to do the shopping for us.
Welcome to the era of agentic commerce — where AI doesn’t just recommend products, but researches, compares, filters, tracks deals, and increasingly, makes decisions on our behalf. As Horizon Futures notes, shopping is shifting “from human-led decisions supported by digital tools to AI agents that can act more autonomously.”
But consumers are already revealing an important tension:
They want the help.
They don’t fully want the handoff.
The Control Paradox
AI has already become deeply embedded into shopping behavior:
82% have used AI for research and comparison
63% have used AI for price tracking
25% have used AI for making purchases
Consumers love the efficiency. But comfort drops once AI moves from assistant to decision-maker.
While 70% are comfortable letting AI handle deal-hunting, only 33% are comfortable with AI handling checkout and payment autonomously.
That gap reveals real hesitation when AI actions have financial consequences. Shoppers may want AI to do the heavy lifting of research, but they want to maintain ownership over the final purchase.
The Automation Hangover
One of the most compelling ideas in the report is what Horizon Futures calls “The Automation Hangover.”
Even when AI makes a good purchase, consumers anticipate emotional fallout afterward:
40% expect to feel anxious or frustrated
23% expect to feel disconnected from the experience
When AI decides, the value of optimization is met with an emotional tax. For some shoppers this means feelings of frustration and disconnect which, if left unchecked, have the potential to erode brand affinity and the joy of discovery in the future.
As one Reddit user put it:
“The joy in the process of researching and buying cannot be taken away from consumers.”
The New Loyalty Test
Agentic commerce also introduces a massive trust question:
Who is the AI actually working for?
76% of consumers believe AI shopping agents should prioritize the consumer’s interests, but only 27% believe they actually do.
That trust gap changes the role brands need to play.
The future won’t just be about being visible to consumers. Brands will increasingly need to prove they are aligned with consumers — not just platforms, algorithms, or sponsored outcomes.
And if trust breaks, consumers demand tangible control and reversibility above all else:
54% want Veto power
48% want Easy returns
32% want Human support
Brand Roles Evolve in an AI-Mediated World
Shoppers aren’t yet ready for full autonomy. Further, AI adoption and readiness will vary by stakes as well as category.
Consumers show more openness to automation for low-stakes purchases like groceries and subscriptions than high-stakes decisions like travel, and financial investments.
The takeaway is clear: agentic commerce is redefining the fundamentals of the brand and consumer relationship.
To win in the next era of AI commerce, brands must champion convenience while maintaining a deep understanding of when people still want to feel like the decision was theirs.
👉Read the full Agentic Commerce report:
