Retail Knows What's Coming. So Why Isn't It Acting?
I read the McKinsey and ICSC report on shopping in the age of AI this week, and one number stopped me cold. Out of 50 retail executives surveyed, 45 said they had considered an agentic commerce strategy. Fewer than five had one signed off at board level.
That gap, between recognising a structural change and actually building for it, is not a resource problem or a technology problem. In my experience, it is almost always a clarity problem.
And what they should be protecting, the thing AI cannot replicate and competitors cannot easily copy, is the quality of the relationship they have with their customers. Long-term retail value is built when engagement, influence, and trust are structured to drive profitable repeat behaviour at scale.
The window for earning the trip is narrowing
The research makes clear that AI agents are already handling a growing share of routine purchasing. Grocery staples, household essentials, everyday replenishment, all of it increasingly automated before a consumer ever thinks about visiting a store. By 2030, McKinsey projects that agentic commerce could account for up to $1 trillion in US retail revenue.
What that means in practice is that the consumer arriving at your door is a different consumer than the one who used to show up out of habit or necessity. They chose to come. That intentional visit carries a higher expectation and a higher opportunity.
But it also means the pool of unconsidered, automatic visits is shrinking. Retailers who have not built a reason for people to choose them, repeatedly and deliberately, are going to feel that contraction before they see it coming.
Inaction upstream means lost revenue downstream
Here is the part of the report that sharpens the urgency further. Nearly half of consumers surveyed said they already use AI for discovery and inspiration before they go anywhere near a store or a website. The consideration phase of the shopping journey has moved upstream, and most retailers are not present in it.
Influence is no longer something you earn at the point of sale. It is formed much earlier, in the moments when a consumer is weighing options, deciding which brands are worth their attention, and settling on a shortlist.
Retailers who are not actively shaping that moment, through data-informed personalisation, authentic advocacy, and content that earns attention, are ceding the decision before it is even made. And a decision ceded upstream is repeat revenue that never arrives.
Trust is the asset and membership is the mechanism
The report draws a useful distinction between trips driven by efficiency and those driven by discovery. I would add a third lens. Whichever mission brings a consumer in, what brings them back is trust.
Trust that the experience will match the promise and that the brand knows them well enough to make the visit feel relevant vs generic. The research notes that millennials and Gen Z carry higher expectations across these dimensions, and they are the generation that will define the next chapter of retail spending.
Here is where I think the real opportunity lies, and it is one the report only hints at. The most sophisticated membership programs are moving away from uniform, one-size treatment toward something more contextual.
The program architecture stays consistent, but what a member actually receives, the recognition, the content, the offers, flexes to reflect how they genuinely behave. A weekend family visit and a solo midweek browse are not the same occasion, and the experience should not feel the same.
Retailers who invest in understanding the distinct shopping identities within their member base, and build the capability to respond to each of them in a way that feels considered rather than automated, are the ones who turn membership from a discounting mechanism into a genuine driver of profitable repeat behaviour at scale.
The bottom line
The McKinsey and ICSC report is a useful strategic prompt. But its most important finding is not about store formats or AI adoption curves. It is about the cost of inaction on the things that actually compound over time: the relationships, the relevance, and the trust that make customers choose you again.
Engagement, influence, and trust are not soft ideals. Structured correctly, they are the commercial infrastructure that makes repeat behaviour at scale possible. The retailers who build that infrastructure now will have something that is very hard to catch up to later.
The question is not whether the shift is coming. It is whether you are building for it.
Max Savransky is the Global Director of Loyalty Strategy at TrueLoyal. Max is a customer strategy, loyalty and data leader with a proven 17-year track record of designing, validating and deploying successful client strategies to drive engagement, retention and revenue growth. Max is also one of the co-authors of 'Loyalty Programs: The Complete Guide' (editions 1 and 2), the definitive book on loyalty for industry professionals.
Prompted by "Shopping in the Age of AI: Redefining Stores for a New Era," McKinsey & Company in collaboration with ICSC, 2026. Worth a read.
