The Future of Commerce: Unified and Augmented by AI Agents

The first ever online purchase took place in 1994 (fun fact: it was a Sting CD). This simple transaction was the first spark of what would eventually turn into the multi-trillion dollar ecommerce market. Thirty years have passed and today, we’re on the brink of an agentic commerce revolution. That escalated quickly.

Now? Customer expectations have never been higher, increasingly sophisticated shopping experiences are becoming tablestakes, and businesses are continuously trying to stay ahead of the competition. The future of commerce belongs to the businesses that can stay nimble as they grow, implement impactful AI, and create cohesive experiences for shoppers, no matter where they engage. Here’s where we think the future of commerce will take us in 2025 and beyond.

Unified commerce will be the foundational element of success.

Your AI tools and capabilities are only as good as the platforms you build and implement them on. Successful, impactful AI depends on the foundation you lay with the rest of your ecommerce tech stack. That’s exactly why more businesses are turning to unified commerce. 

Unified commerce makes consistent customer experiences across online, in-store, and mobile channels possible. It connects digital commerce, point of sale, and order management on one platform. When these critical systems are all connected, you can drive consistent engagement and seamless transactions on any channel — without bolting on costly, siloed tools.

The business outcomes of implementing unified commerce? Data consistency and centralization. Agility and operational efficiency. Better customer experiences. And that’s the critical foundation for impactful agentic commerce. When these areas of your business are unified, it makes agentic AI implementations faster, easier, and more effective.  

Assistive tools will give way to agentic commerce.

Agentic Commerce goes beyond the glorified task automation — it’s proactive, complex, real-time decision-making. Agentic commerce doesn’t just recommend what to do — AI agents actually do it, from acquisition tasks in marketing to conversion optimization in commerce. Agents can automatically adjust pricing, personalize offers, build product bundles, answer order inquiries, and more.

For businesses, this translates to higher conversions, better scalability, and happier customers. Rather than assisting IT, development, merchandising, and other marketing teams, agents work beside them. In the future of ecommerce, AI agents will change what it means to work — and to shop.

Gut instinct will be replaced by increasingly intelligent merchandising.

With AI models now able to run thousands of micro-experiments on user behavior, the future of merchandising won’t be driven by creative intuition — it will be programmatically generated and constantly tested. From personalized product bundles to dynamic pricing and predictive returns modeling, AI will unlock automation, optimization, and scalability with ease and speed never before possible. 

The future of commerce (and the future of merchandising) will be augmented by AI agents. The new coveted skillset? Training, prompting, and building AI agents, not outguessing them.

Composable commerce will become ubiquitous. 

The pressure on businesses to adapt to changing needs and expectations is only rising, but inflexible architecture and strained IT teams prevent them from doing so. To empower IT teams and help them move quickly, businesses are increasingly incorporating composable architectures. With composable commerce, applications or services are built from modular and reusable components like APIs. 

Composable commerce fosters innovation and customization by allowing businesses to mix and match components or develop solutions. This flexibility empowers commerce teams to create unique, tailored customer experiences and experiment with new technologies or business models. In the future of commerce, composable will be increasingly embraced as a solution to ongoing pain points around inflexible digital storefronts. Commerce leaders are already taking note: 46% of IT teams have implemented composable architecture, and 43% plan to.

LLM-powered search will transform shopping as we know it.

LLMs enable shoppers to search using natural language instead of rigid keywords: “Show me comfy running shoes for wide feet under $100”. This mimics how people talk and think, making search feel more intuitive and personal. LLMs can power AI shopping agents, which act as personal shopping assistants and help customers find exactly what they’re looking for — without scrolling through product listing pages. LLMs enable agents to ask follow-up questions, refine choices, or suggest complementary products — creating a more interactive, guided experience.

This has implications for traditional product detail pages, ecommerce site search, and ecommerce sites in general. In the future of commerce, traditional product listing pages with category grids and filters will become more dynamic and personalized based on real-time user queries.

In the agentic future, when a user searches for comfy running shoes under $100, they may be directed to a curated page assembled by agents on the fly, rather than a prebuilt category. Ultimately, the shopping experience will feel a lot smoother, and businesses that invest early in unified, omni-channel commerce will have the upper-hand.

Are you ready for the future of commerce?

The landscape is changing fast and competition is heating up, but companies with the right tools and strategies will find success. As you plan for 2025, focus on implementing strategies that will help you deliver on rising customer expectations, fast. Increasingly, that means unifying commerce with the rest of your business, leveraging AI and automation, and adopting architectures that free up development and IT resources. The future of commerce belongs to organizations that can move fast, iterate, and innovate.