Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Retail leaders have spent the better part of three years running artificial intelligence experiments. Smart shelf analytics here. A dynamic pricing engine there. A conversational bot standing in for customer service agents on the overnight shift. The results have been encouraging, sometimes even impressive, and the industry has responded with enthusiasm. But enthusiasm, unchecked by…

Every day, thousands of people are searching and reading about your company. About your team's expertise. Learning from guides and marketing collateral. These actions have been building trust in your brand. All without ever clicking through to your website. A manager in need of help with chatbot implementation might take their questions to an artificial…

We're moving rapidly into the era of agentic commerce — a shift in which AI-powered digital agents shop, compare, and purchase on behalf of consumers, making the transaction itself nearly invisible. Rather than manually browsing websites, filtering options, and navigating checkouts, customers increasingly delegate these tasks to smart assistants that handle the entire purchase journey.…

For the past two years, much of the retail artificial intelligence conversation has centered on e-commerce — personalization, chatbots and, increasingly, agentic commerce. The assumption has been that the most advanced applications of AI would emerge where digital interaction is richest. However, some of the most disciplined, and potentially most impactful, uses of AI in…

Artificial intelligence in retail, especially agentic AI, first seemed to promise a leap forward in customer experience. In 2026, though, AI is likely to have the most influence on customer behavior. We’re already seeing behavior shift in ways that are pushing retailers to rethink their discovery, partnership, and channel strategies. In this article, we’ll look…

Today’s marketers are integrating generative artificial intelligence solutions across workflows, automating key components of campaign creation and orchestration. And they're seeing results in record time. However, the next era of AI-enabled marketing strategies will not be centered on automation. Tomorrow’s marketing leaders will be focused on building agentic AI solutions that can handle complex workflows…

Something strange is happening in e-commerce. Consumer spending is up. Online time is up. Yet traffic to major retail websites is declining. The answer is actually quite simple: shoppers are changing how they research and where they buy. Their starting point, which used to be about discovery, is now where they're making decisions. Many may…

Ace Hardware, the world's largest hardware cooperative, has launched Hey ARMA, an artificial intelligence-powered assistant designed to support its nationwide in-store associates with real-time information and guidance. Operated through a handheld device, Hey ARMA provides associates with quick access to product knowledge, project advice, and recommendations, helping them to focus on solving customer problems and…

Retailers are moving fast on artificial intelligence. Research from Eversheds Sutherland and Retail Economics suggests that around nine in 10 retail decision-makers are exploring AI agents, and roughly a third are already deploying them in areas like chatbots, forecasting, and personalization. Yet the majority of leaders still report limited returns from those efforts. The issue…

Google is turning Gemini into a storefront. By letting people shop and check out directly inside Gemini, partnering with giants like Walmart, Google has solved the convenience problem. For consumers it means fewer clicks and less friction between discovery and purchase. But for retailers this creates a massive blind spot. When artificial intelligence becomes the…