E-commerce / AI Agentic AI Is Reshaping E-Commerce, and Retailers Need to Prepare 

The way customers discover and buy products online is constantly evolving. AI-powered shopping assistants, conversational commerce, and intelligent product discovery are already influencing how consumers shop today. 

During a breakout session at D-Congress 2026, hosted by  Avensia and Voyado together with brands Cervera, Kitchn and Tilbords, the discussion focused on how Agentic AI is beginning to reshape e-commerce, what opportunities it creates, and why retailers must carefully consider the risks that come with it. 

From Traditional Search to AI-Led Shopping Journeys 

For years, e-commerce has largely relied on structured navigation and keyword-based search: customers browsing categories, refining filters and manually comparing products before making a purchase.  Agentic AI changes this behavior completely.

Instead of navigating through fixed site structures, customers are increasingly interacting with AI assistants through natural language. They describe what they want, explain their intent, ask for inspiration or compare products conversationally.  Rather than searching for a specific product, a customer may instead say:

• "I want to make homemade pizza, what do I need? "

• "I need a birthday gift for my wife."

• "Which of these products is the most durable? "

• "Recommend wine glasses under 500 SEK for a dinner party."

This new behavior represents a major shift in product discovery. Shoppers are no longer only searching for products, but searching for solutions, inspiration and guidance.

The Growing Importance of Off-Site Commerce

One of the most significant changes discussed in the breakout session was the rise of off-site commerce.  Platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude are becoming new discovery channels where customers begin their shopping journey outside the retailer’s website. AI agents can recommend products, compare retailers and guide users toward purchases directly within conversational interfaces. 

This creates exciting opportunities for visibility and traffic, but it also introduces new risks.  When AI platforms control customer interactions, retailers lose much of the influence they traditionally had over the customer journey. Product ranking, merchandising, brand storytelling , and customer experience are increasingly determined by external AI systems rather than by the retailer itself. 

Customer context and behavioral data may also remain within the AI platform rather than within the retailer’s ecosystem.  For retailers that have spent years building strong brands, curated experiences and loyalty programs, this shift raises important strategic questions: 

• How do you remain visible when AI agents become the new storefront?  

• How do you protect your brand identity?  

• How do you maintain ownership of the customer relationship?  

• How do you preserve loyalty and personalization?  

The honest truth is that retailers should not resist this development, but rather actively prepare for it.

Retailers Need More Than Just AI Chatbots

Simply adding a chatbot to an e-commerce site is not enough, and the focus should not be on adding AI for the sake of AI. The focus must remain on customer experience.  Successful AI implementations need to make shopping: 

• Faster  

• More relevant  

• More intuitive  

• More inspirational  

• More engaging  

This is where next-generation onsite discovery experiences become critical.  Instead of static product listings and endless filtering, customers with the help of conversational product discovery can refine searches naturally, ask follow-up questions, receive inspiration and continuously narrow down options through dialogue.  The experience becomes less about searching and more about discovering. 

Importantly, these experiences still need to balance AI capabilities with business priorities such as stock availability, merchandising strategies, product performance , and personalization.

Cervera, Kitchn and Tilbords: Three Brands Seeing Results

Nordic retail group Homeco and its brands Cervera, Kitchn and Tilbords are already far ahead in the field.   Their joint AI assistant, “Kai” demonstrates how far retailers can already come with conversational commerce today. 

The solution combines multiple AI agents working together behind the scenes. Different specialized agents handle product expertise, customer service, order management, recommendations and contextual understanding. An orchestration layer interprets customer intent and routes questions to the appropriate expert.  The result is an experience that feels far more human, contextual and helpful than traditional support chat systems. 

The solution has already handled hundreds of thousands of conversations while successfully resolving a large share of customer inquiries without human intervention. At the same time, the operational cost per conversation has become dramatically lower compared to traditional customer support.  Perhaps most importantly, the experience is helping recreate some of the expertise and service customers normally associate with physical retail environments. 

The Future of E-Commerce Will Be Conversational 

One thing  is very clear: e-commerce is entering a new phase.  AI may be changing how people shop, but great customer experiences will still always be what makes customers return.

Customers increasingly expect conversational, AI-assisted experiences both on-site and off-site and retailers that listen to these expectations early have an opportunity to create more engaging, personalized and efficient shopping journeys. 

At the same time, the rise of agentic AI forces retailers to think carefully about ownership, visibility and customer relationships in an AI-driven ecosystem.  It is the retailers that combine the strengths of AI with strong customer experience design, brand identity and intelligent use of their own data that will see the best results.

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