If an AI shopping assistant handles the sale instead of your website, who does the customer end up loyal to?
Can retailers use off-site agents to compete without losing customer loyalty?
This explores whether retailers can sell through AI shopping agents they don't own, such as Meta's Muse or a ChatGPT-style assistant, without losing their direct relationship with the customer.
This explores whether retailers can sell through AI shopping agents they don't control without giving up the customer relationship that loyalty depends on. The short answer from the corpus: some can, but only if they stay part of the transaction's plumbing. No source here directly measures what happens to loyalty. What the corpus offers instead are arguments about where loyalty goes once an agent sits between the shopper and the store.
The most hopeful evidence comes from travel. Many expected AI agents to cut out online travel agencies. Instead, OTAs are becoming the settlement layer that agents book through. They keep merchant-of-record status, meaning they process the payment and own the transaction, through API integrations. Independent hotels' dependence on them actually rose to 63.4% Are AI agents actually removing online travel agencies from bookings?. The lesson for retailers is that you can let someone else's agent find the customer and still keep the relationship, as long as you remain the party that completes the sale. Accenture pushes the other way and argues brands should build their own agents. Consumers say in surveys that they prefer retailer-built agents, but that's a stated preference, not proven behavior Will brands succeed by building their own AI shopping agents?.
The bigger threat isn't that agents bypass retailers. It's that they dissolve the unit loyalty was built on. Bain argues that agents assembling one cart across several stores could end the idea of 'your grocery basket at your store.' Competition would then happen item by item, with full price transparency Could AI agents reassemble shopping baskets across multiple retailers?. Jaipuria makes a related point. Agents care about value, not page position, so merchants may end up turning ad budgets into price cuts Could agents redirect merchant ad budgets toward customer savings?. In that world, loyalty to a retailer starts to look like loyalty to whoever offers the best terms this week.
The less obvious point is that loyalty may move to the agent itself. Bilgihan and colleagues argue that agents which actually make purchases help shape what consumers want, through repeated back-and-forth conversation, instead of just carrying out preferences the shopper already had Do AI shopping agents reshape what consumers actually want?. If so, the agent's owner ends up holding the relationship, and its incentives matter. Azhar argues that an agent earning referral fees from merchants can't be loyal to both the merchant and the user Can an AI agent serve both merchant and user interests fairly?. Hedges warns that ad-funded agents have built-in reasons to favor paid placements Do advertising-funded shopping agents favor paid product placements?. A simulation found that when a platform's ranking and sellers' product descriptions both play to an agent's biases, harm to consumers more than doubles, even without coordination Can platform ranking and seller descriptions separately harm AI shoppers?.
So whether retailers can compete through outside agents depends on rules that don't exist yet. Choudary argues that buyer-only agents just change where shoppers enter the market. Real change needs seller-side agents too, so retailers can negotiate rather than simply get ranked Do one-sided consumer agents actually change market structure?. Amazon blocking Muse shows that without standard ways for agents to identify themselves and prove they're authorized, retailers' only tool is a terms-of-service ban What identity standards do shopping agents actually need?. Waller expects the market to split into open and closed agent ecosystems, much like payment networks did. Which side a retailer joins may decide how much of the customer relationship it keeps Will agentic commerce platforms adopt open or closed models?.
Sources 11 notes
Goswami's 2026 travel data shows independent hotels' OTA dependence rose to 63.4% even as AI agents emerged, with OTAs retaining merchant-of-record status through API integrations. Expedia's B2B segment grew 24% year-over-year, now 38% of revenue.
Accenture reports 71% of consumers expect AI agents to influence half their spending within 12 months and prefer retailer-built agents. However, the evidence reflects consumer preferences in surveys rather than demonstrated agent capability or functioning comparison infrastructure at scale.
Bain argues that AI agents capable of assembling carts across multiple vendors—not just multiple products—could erode the retailer-owned basket concept, particularly in grocery. This would shift competition to the basket level, increasing price transparency and margin pressure across the industry.
Jaipuria argues that once agents replace human shoppers, merchants have incentive to convert ad budgets into lower prices and better terms rather than sponsored listings, since agents optimize for value rather than page position. Google's Direct Offers pilot demonstrates this shift in action.
Bilgihan and colleagues argue that transactional AI agents—which execute purchases rather than just recommend—end the consumer's sole cognitive role in preference formation. Preferences emerge through bidirectional feedback loops between agent learning and consumer trust, not independently beforehand.
Show all 11 sources
Azhar argues that agents like Meta's Muse, which earn referral fees from merchants like Expedia, face structural conflicts that prevent unbiased recommendations. The incentive to collect fees, not technology, determines which platforms build or block such agents.
Bob Hedges, former Visa Chief Data Officer at MIT, warns that advertising business models create structural incentives for shopping agents to favor paid placements over neutral recommendations, independent of technical design quality.
A simulation found that when a platform optimizes its ranking and sellers optimize their descriptions—each separately targeting the same agent biases—consumer harm more than doubles compared to either acting alone, without requiring coordination.
Choudary argues that consumer-only agents like Muse and Instinct change where buyers enter markets but cannot alter market mechanisms themselves. True structural change requires seller-side agents too, enabling negotiation between represented parties rather than buyer optimization within fixed supplier offerings.
Amazon's block of Meta's Muse reveals that AI agents need standardized ways to identify themselves and prove authorization to retailers—separate from consumer-side credential security. Without such protocols, retailers enforce access through terms-of-service blocks rather than negotiated standards.
Waller argues agentic commerce platforms will divide between open systems allowing multiple agents and closed systems requiring proprietary ones, mirroring payment network structure. This choice will shape market concentration, vertical integration, and standards adoption.
Papers this line draws on 8
The research behind the notes this line reads — ranked by how closely each paper relates.
- What Is Your AI Agent Buying? Evaluation, Biases, Model Dependence, & Emerging Implications for Agentic E-Commerce
- When Agents Shop for You: Role Coherence in AI-Mediated Markets
- AI Agents Want to Shop for You: The Future of Agentic Commerce
- Vertical tacit collusion in AI-mediated markets
- From Product Search to Preference Articulation: The Economics of Agentic Commerce
- Whom Do AI Agents Work For? Role Assignment Induces Sponsorship Bias in LLM Recommenders
- Agentic AI in Retail: How Autonomous Shopping Is Redefining the Customer Journey
- Agentic Commerce and Incentives