Dor
16 articles
90% of Retailers Are Increasing AI Budgets in 2026: Where the Smart Money Is Going
Where Is Retail AI Money Actually Going? As of January 2026, retail AI investment has matured from experimental pilots to operational infrastructure. According to NVIDIA's third annual State of AI in Retail and CPG survey, 91% of the industry is now actively using or assessing AI, up from 82% just two years ago. The shift from "exploring" to "deploying" is accelerating. The survey reveals three dominant investment categories: Investment Category % of Retailers Prioritizing Primary ROI Dr
74% of Consumers Now Use AI for Shopping: What the Latest Data Means for Your Catalog
TL;DR: Three-quarters of consumers already use AI for shopping, yet most retailers remain invisible to these AI-powered discovery channels. The 805% surge in AI traffic during Black Friday 2025 signals an urgent window: retailers who optimize for AI agents now will capture the $385 billion agentic commerce market by 2030. Those who wait risk becoming background utilities in an agent-controlled marketplace. Here is a startling paradox: 74% of consumers now use AI tools in their shopping journey
Amazon's Buy for Me Controversy: Why Retailers Are Losing Control of Their Catalogs
TL;DR: Amazon's "Buy for Me" feature lists products from third-party websites without merchant permission, turning independent brands into unwitting fulfillment partners. This controversy highlights a fundamental divide in agentic commerce: walled-garden approaches that scrape and sell versus open protocols that require merchant consent. Angie Chua, founder of stationery brand Bobo Design Studio, discovered something unsettling in late December: orders flooding in from an address she had never
UCP vs ACP: Which Agentic Commerce Protocol Should Retailers Choose?
TL;DR: Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at NRF 2026, joining Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) as the second major open standard for AI shopping. UCP handles the full commerce journey from discovery to post-purchase, while ACP focuses specifically on checkout flows. Most retailers will need both protocols, but infrastructure platforms can eliminate the integration burden. With McKinsey projecting agentic commerce to reach $3-5 trillion globally by 2030, protocol selec
The Retailer's Guide to Agentic Commerce
Executive Summary AI shopping agents are no longer a future consideration-they're processing 50 million shopping queries daily on ChatGPT alone. This guide provides retail executives and e-commerce leaders with a practical framework for capturing this emerging channel. You'll learn: 1. What agentic commerce is and why it matters now 2. The three strategic approaches retailers are taking 3. Protocol landscape and which integrations to prioritize 4. Implementation roadmap from zero to live
AI Visibility: The New SEO
Executive Summary For two decades, retailers have invested heavily in search engine optimization. Rankings, keywords, backlinks-these concepts shaped digital commerce strategy. But a seismic shift is underway. When 50 million people ask ChatGPT for product recommendations every day, traditional SEO is irrelevant. AI agents don't crawl websites or follow PageRank algorithms. They make recommendations based on entirely different criteria-criteria most retailers don't understand and can't current
From Groceries to Everything: What DoorDash's AI Expansion Plans Mean for Local Commerce
TL;DR: DoorDash launched its ChatGPT app on December 17, 2025, creating a branded storefront inside ChatGPT powered by MCP. The company plans to expand "beyond groceries to more local categories." Restaurants, alcohol, and convenience stores are the logical next verticals. Local merchants have a narrow window to prepare their catalogs for conversational commerce before DoorDash becomes the default discovery channel. The race to become the AI-powered local commerce hub just accelerated. On Decem
From Catalog to Conversation: A Tale of Three Christmas Shopping Eras
TL;DR: Christmas shopping has evolved through three delegation eras: the catalog era (2005) where we did everything ourselves, the AI assistant era (2025) where 42% of Gen Z uses ChatGPT for advice, and the autonomous agent era (2030) where AI handles purchases. The shift from "I'll find it" to "just handle it" transforms retail. Picture December 2005. A dog-eared Sears catalog sits on the kitchen counter, pages folded at the corners. You're planning a trip to the mall tomorrow, armed with a ha
$385B by 2030: Why Agentic Commerce Is Retail's Next Mobile Moment
Now let me produce the final revised version addressing the reviewer's feedback: TL;DR: Morgan Stanley projects agentic commerce could capture $385 billion of U.S. e-commerce by 2030. With 23% of Americans already making AI-assisted purchases and grocery leading adoption at 49%, this represents the most significant commerce shift since smartphones put stores in every pocket. When Morgan Stanley publishes a bull case for any emerging technology, Wall Street listens. When that bull case targets
Anthropic Donates MCP to Linux Foundation: What Retailers Must Know Now
TL;DR: On December 9, 2025, Anthropic donated the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to the Linux Foundation's new Agentic AI Foundation—a watershed moment for retail. With 10,000+ MCP servers active, 97 million monthly SDK downloads, and platinum backing from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, MCP just became the neutral infrastructure layer for AI commerce. Retailers integrating now gain first-mover advantage as AI agents increasingly control product discovery and purchasing. What Just Happene