AI Shifts Product Discovery, not Loyalty

Agentic commerce systems can interpret buying intent, evaluate alternatives, recommend products, assemble carts, and potentially complete purchases. Merchants still control inventory and fulfillment, but the customer relationship can shift toward an intermediary AI that merchants cannot fully see, understand, or influence. Instead of persuading shoppers directly on a site, merchants may need to persuade the system, which then recommends or purchases for the customer. Google’s proposed Universal Cart would let shoppers compare and buy products from multiple retailers across Google Search and potentially YouTube and Gmail, with Google owning the cart through discovery, comparison, and checkout. Independent retailers worry this could commoditize products and eliminate opportunities for selling, upselling, and browsing.

"Agentic commerce systems can interpret buying intent, evaluate alternatives, recommend products, assemble carts, and potentially complete purchases. Merchants still own inventory and fulfillment, but a portion of the relationship shifts to an intermediary AI. Rather than converting shoppers directly onsite, sellers may persuade the system, which, in turn, makes recommendations to or purchases for the customer."

"Consider, for example, Google's proposed Universal Cart, announced at I/O 2026. The cart would allow shoppers to compare and purchase products from many retailers across Google Search and eventually even YouTube and Gmail. Google would "own" the cart throughout the product discovery, comparison, and checkout. Merchants are the sellers, but Google becomes much more involved in purchase decisions."

""The problem with agentic ordering is that it turns all products into commodities," wrote Joel Moskowitz of Tools for Working Wood in an email. "The retailer has absolutely no chance to sell, upsell, or encourage browsing. If a bot is doing the buying, that's certainly the case. If there's a universal cart, it has basically the same effect.""

"Yet ecommerce sellers have seen this pattern before. One could argue that every major change in ecommerce product discovery has altered where customer relationships begin and who controls them. Search engines and marketplaces drove discoverability. Social platforms offered access to a shared audience but changed what content worked and who saw it. Each is an overlapping product distribution and attention channel."

Read at Practical Ecommerce