Agentic AI: A Primer

Retailers, take time to make sure you’re up to speed on  “agentic AI.”  Here’s why, according to a new report from Quantum Black, AI by McKinsey:

“Agentic commerce—shopping powered by Artificial Intelligence agents acting on our behalf—represents a seismic shift in the marketplace. It moves us toward a world in which AI anticipates consumer needs, navigates shopping options, negotiates deals and executes transactions, all in alignment with human intent yet acting independently via multistep chains of actions enabled by reasoning models.”

Among the retailers working to integrate agentic AI into their operations are such high-profile brands Walmart, Levi Straus and Amazon, say published reports.

Once all the technical dots are connected, agentic AI promises to radically remake the entire shopping experience, McKinsey says. “It’s a rethinking of shopping itself in which the boundaries between platforms, services and experiences give way to an integrated intent-driven flow, through highly personalized consumer journeys that deliver a fast, frictionless outcome.”

Achieving such effortless end results won’t be easy, McKinsey notes. “From a technical standpoint, that means mastering and deploying emerging integration enablers like Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol, Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) that enable a new era of intelligent, autonomous agents. It also means fundamentally re-architecting approaches to identity management and loyalty. Smart organizations are already beginning to create new, agent-ready sites that provide both strong agentic and consumer experiences.”

But for those willing to undertake all that’s needed to turn seamless agentic commerce into a reality, the payoff could be huge:  “By 2030, the US B2C retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce, with global projections reaching as high as $3 trillion to $5 trillion,” according to McKinsey research.

Click here for the full McKinsey report.