‘Nonprofits have an unexpected advantage. If AI agents can shop, they can donate. Integrating donation forms into LLMs could eliminate the friction that kills impulse giving.’
hadn’t thought of this point. either way it sounds like we are in for a lot of change here. great article!
JHong, I'm a writer thinking about attention, trust, and what makes people stop scrolling. This line stopped me: "If your value proposition is purely price-based, you're about to get negotiated into the ground." It made me think about Substack, actually—where the value isn't price, but voice. No agent can negotiate a better version of someone's singular perspective. That feels like the real moat now.
This sparked something for me: I realized I’m barely ‘shopping’ anymore, I’m just paying bills and re‑upping groceries on Amazon. What I actually want is a household agent that quietly estimates our consumption, watches Whole Foods sales, and proposes a weekly cart plus a simple meal plan that I can approve or tweak. Once I wrote that sentence I thought… maybe it’s time to actually build it and use my own kitchen as the sandbox for agentic commerce.
While you’re at it, can your agent connect to the fridge and also indicate when recurring items (milk, eggs) need to be replenished? Thanks in advance 😂
This is probably buildable. An agent that combines fridge inventory, NYT Cooking, and Instacart. You have half the ingredients for a 5-star rated recipe. It orders the balance (plus whatever groceries are needed for the week) and voila, dinner and shopping is done!
I hear you. I think it’ll go the course of Air Canada, where the agent is considered a representative of the brand (or the consumer). Positive externality: agent training is about to get really strong.
Jennifer, thanks for this write-up! I didn’t pay much attention to agentic purchasing until recently, and I can see myself trusting AI agents with about 30% of my purchases. I’m already not picky about brands or specific makes for consumables, but for highly personalized items like handbags, I’m just as picky as you. I’m really curious to see how e-commerce evolves over the next couple of years.
Thanks for reading :) It should be interesting to see how it picks up. Some online shoppers love the hunt of finding their product at a great price, now this can be delegated to their agent. It’s wild to think about how this might look by the end of this year!
‘Nonprofits have an unexpected advantage. If AI agents can shop, they can donate. Integrating donation forms into LLMs could eliminate the friction that kills impulse giving.’
hadn’t thought of this point. either way it sounds like we are in for a lot of change here. great article!
We really are!!
Seamless FTW 🙌
JHong, I'm a writer thinking about attention, trust, and what makes people stop scrolling. This line stopped me: "If your value proposition is purely price-based, you're about to get negotiated into the ground." It made me think about Substack, actually—where the value isn't price, but voice. No agent can negotiate a better version of someone's singular perspective. That feels like the real moat now.
As someone who’s worked in luxury branding I’d say price should only be a differentiator when it’s more towards the pinnacle, and not the bottom.
But we have Joel to thank for that line!
And I hear you on voice… esp in an “AI smooth, AI flat” age.
This sparked something for me: I realized I’m barely ‘shopping’ anymore, I’m just paying bills and re‑upping groceries on Amazon. What I actually want is a household agent that quietly estimates our consumption, watches Whole Foods sales, and proposes a weekly cart plus a simple meal plan that I can approve or tweak. Once I wrote that sentence I thought… maybe it’s time to actually build it and use my own kitchen as the sandbox for agentic commerce.
While you’re at it, can your agent connect to the fridge and also indicate when recurring items (milk, eggs) need to be replenished? Thanks in advance 😂
😂 seriously, we’ve got ClawBot, but what we really need is HouseBot.
😂😂😂
This is probably buildable. An agent that combines fridge inventory, NYT Cooking, and Instacart. You have half the ingredients for a 5-star rated recipe. It orders the balance (plus whatever groceries are needed for the week) and voila, dinner and shopping is done!
I'm still struggling with this direction as a consumer - agent purchasing. It'll happen but I struggle with the fcks up and recourse
I’m there Chris, I shut off my Claude on Chrome when making a purchase haha
I hear you. I think it’ll go the course of Air Canada, where the agent is considered a representative of the brand (or the consumer). Positive externality: agent training is about to get really strong.
Jennifer, thanks for this write-up! I didn’t pay much attention to agentic purchasing until recently, and I can see myself trusting AI agents with about 30% of my purchases. I’m already not picky about brands or specific makes for consumables, but for highly personalized items like handbags, I’m just as picky as you. I’m really curious to see how e-commerce evolves over the next couple of years.
Same here, Jenny!
Thanks for reading :) It should be interesting to see how it picks up. Some online shoppers love the hunt of finding their product at a great price, now this can be delegated to their agent. It’s wild to think about how this might look by the end of this year!