Want to Stay Visible in the Agentic Shopping Era? Make Your Brand Useful

Did holiday shopping drive you to the edge of sanity this past season? That frustration, felt by more than three-quarters of consumers, is exactly why agentic shopping is catching on—and why it’ll be the norm within two years.

Every year, shoppers brave a digital obstacle course of paid placements, sketchy drop-shippers, and 15-tab rabbit holes to find the right gift for their hard-to-please sister or video game-obsessed nephew. In 2025, some shoppers handed parts of the job to AI. 

AI agents help with the tedious stuff: generating gift ideas, comparing deals, and in rare cases, completing transactions.

Full-on AI shopping agents that complete your list are still more beta than real life, but the trend has kicked off. More than half of consumers planned to use AI to shop this season, while just one-quarter didn’t want AI’s help at all.

Naturally, this has brands sweating. If shoppers only interact with products via AI, won’t that erase brands from the process? It certainly could. AI is just an assistant today, but the more people use it to compare prices or handle returns, the more they’ll trust it with bigger tasks like completing purchases. Technology is heading that way, too. Start adapting to this reality today or play catch-up later.

Agentic shopping doesn’t have to be a threat. Consider it a window into what customers really want when they engage with brands: ease. Make it simple to shop with you today, and you’ll stick in their minds when they use AI agents later.

What Agentic Shopping Is (and What It’s Not)

Agentic shopping uses AI agents to handle parts of the decision-making and purchasing process using memory, reasoning, and autonomy. These tools can interpret a shopper’s goals, carry context across steps, and execute multi-part tasks like comparing items or tracking inventory.

Some agents live inside platforms like Google’s Search Generative Experience, while others work through browser extensions or mobile apps. Most are still assistive rather than fully autonomous. 

What makes agentic shopping different from traditional recommendation engines is that these agents can respond to open-ended prompts (“Find me a coat under $200 that’ll arrive before Friday”), remember what’s been asked, and adapt based on follow-ups.

In theory, they’re the closest thing to a shopping assistant most people have ever had. In practice, they’re early and imperfect.

Why Brands Are Nervous About Agentic Shopping

Agentic shopping could render brands invisible—not unlike the brick-and-mortar stores left high and dry by the aughts’ ecommerce boom. 

And just like mall boutiques couldn’t stay afloat with window displays and friendly associates alone, brands today can’t rely on the same old tricks. They’re facing a world where AI agents:

• Disrupt the carefully designed, heavily invested brand experience.
• Bypass sites and apps in favor of AI-driven product feeds.
• Mute marketing channels like paid search and SEO.
• Flatten brand differentiation into bulleted lists scraped by bots.

These changes put pressure on brands to earn a lasting spot in shoppers’ minds. That way, when AI agents do take the reins, customers ask for products from your brand by name.

Brands still have time to plant these seeds. The infrastructure to make agentic shopping seamless is still under construction, and shoppers aren’t ready to give full control to AI. But that window of opportunity is going to close fast. 

Act Now to Prepare for Agentic Shopping

Meet customers’ expectations for simple shopping and they’ll remember you. Email and SMS have a big role to play here. You’re competing with an extreme volume of marketing messages, so make sure every note you send is personal, timely, and relevant. If it doesn’t meet those criteria, don’t hit send at all.

When you tailor messages to each customer, they can skip the same hassles they’re dodging when they shop with AI. That’s what will make you memorable.

Here’s how to get started.

Be helpful, not relentless. When customers shop with AI, they get bespoke recommendations based on exactly what they ask for. That level of personalization blows repetitive, one-size-fits-all marketing messages out of the water.

You can use your marketing channels to create a similar experience, using AI-driven customer insights to orchestrate smarter, more sparing, better-timed outreach across SMS and email. For example:

• If someone recently explored multiple gift categories, help narrow it down with a message highlighting popular picks.
• If their cart is full and the holiday shipping cutoff is near, prompt them with a quick text.
• If they browsed a product multiple times but didn’t add it to cart, follow up with an email that highlights reviews or a limited-time offer.

Helpfulness is the bar. Relevance is the win. 

Personalize with customers’ trust. The phone number is a powerful identity anchor. It lets you connect customer behavior across sessions and channels, but how you use that data matters.

More than 80% of shoppers ignore irrelevant messages, and they’re more likely to engage when content actually reflects what they’ve shown interest in.

Use the data you have, but make it count. Recommend based on their history and behavior, and don’t ask them to repeat themselves.

Get customers talking. If you want your messages to stick, don’t make it a one-sided conversation. Invite customers to interact.

Zero-party data, like preferences shared directly via a brief quiz or prompted SMS reply, is a strong differentiator here. For example, if a shopper replies to a text saying they’re shopping “for her” or “under $50,” you can tailor the next message with a gift guide that fits.

When you use zero-party input to design communication loops, you build the familiarity and trust you need to stay visible.

Brand Marketing Has a New Benchmark

Agentic shopping reminds us to put customers first. Simplify, guide, and get out of the way, while still showing up where it counts.

If a customer loves your brand, you’re more likely to have a place in their future. When the agentic shopping assistant of tomorrow asks a customer what brands to check first, your name will show up in their prompt. 

The brands building loyalty today will be remembered by name tomorrow.

Keri McGhee is the chief marketing officer at Attentive, an AI marketing platform. She leads strategic global marketing, overseeing product marketing, revenue marketing, events, partner marketing, communications and content, and brand creative. McGhee has led marketing at various start-ups and as a senior director at Zillow, where she led the B2B marketing team responsible for strengthening partner loyalty and experience for 60,000-plus real estate partners. She got her start in tech at Expedia, leading both consumer and corporate travel marketing teams.