This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment explores Amazon Web Services' new Agentic Shopping Assistant and the growing battle for control of customer relationships in retail.

Chris Walton and Shelley Huff discuss whether retailers should trust Amazon to power their AI shopping experiences, why customer data remains one of retail's most valuable assets, and what brands must protect as commerce becomes increasingly AI-driven.

The conversation also dives into agentic commerce, generative search, and the future of customer discovery online.

⏩ Tune in for the full episode here: https://youtu.be/3lV5GVTa-TQ

#AI #AgenticCommerce #AWS #Amazon #RetailTechnology #CustomerData #GenerativeAI #RetailStrategy #RetailNews #OmniTalk

AWS announced the Agentic Shopping Assistant on aws, a new solution that packages the architecture, starter code and expert guidance behind Amazon's own Alexa for Shopping AI Assistant and makes it available to any retailer to deploy as their own branded conversational shopping experience.

According to an About Amazon blog post, the solution was built together with the AWS Generative AI Innovation center and is tailored to each retailer's specific catalog, customer base and brand voice, allowing retailers to launch their own conversational shopping experience in weeks rather than the years it would take to build it from scratch.

Kate Spade is reportedly already using the solution to build its own AI shopping experience with additional retailers currently in testing.

Shelley I waited till the end to bring this headline into the fold because I really want to get your opinion and I want to know, is leveraging Amazon's tech for on site generative AI search something you would have considered at Certa Simmons?

If yes, why?

And if not, why not?

Well, speaking for, I'll just speak generally for any brand.

Okay.

Renting technology is smart.

Compromising your customer relationship is very dangerous, especially with somebody as big as Amazon with the resources that they have.

So I would probably use Amazon technology to learn, but that's about it.

So.

So I wouldn't want Amazon controlling my long term customer experience.

But this is really where every retailer has to kind of answer this question.

And I think this is the biggest question over the next 10 years of retail is who's going to own the customer intelligence layer for your company?

And right now we have Google, Amazon, OpenAI, or is it going to be yourself?

And each retailer or brand is going to have to assess the risks of each of those and what's going to be most beneficial.

But if I had the resources to build my own solution or take a smaller off the shelf solution for this, I would use it.

I would not count on Amazon doing this over time and giving them that much data about my customers.

Yeah, I think I 100% agree.

My question I have for you that you're making me think of like does it matter what type of retailer you are?

Like, you know, does the fact that, like am I okay with this, that Kate Spade is testing it?

Or would you tell the same thing to Kate Spade versus like you know, Walmart would never do it, but like, you know, a Walgreens is an example, you know, a top 10 US retailer, would you ever, you know, advise them to do it?

Or would you take the same approach that you just said?

Like, does it matter what vertical or what size of retailer you are?

I think it matters the brands that you have.

So for instance, Kate Spade is a brand.

So if people are shopping for Kate Spade, they have a lot of brand equity.

I would argue in a Google ecosystem where they can essentially prop up other brands or if they eventually start charging for search results and those sorts of things, that could become margin dilutive for a brand like Kate Spade.

But when you have something so unique in a brand, it probably isn't risky.

But if you're, you know, a retailer that has brands that are sold across multiple retailers, I think that that becomes, you know, a little bit more risky in terms of how much data Amazon's actually getting about in, in terms of your business.

So, yeah, I think it depends.

Yeah, I think I, I think I, I, I think I fundamentally agree with you.

I mean, I think, you know, when I step back, I'm like, I think you consider it.

You know, I might kind of put this softball question out there in some ways.

Like I was like, do you consider it?

I think, yeah, you always consider it.

You never like dismiss anything wholeheartedly.

But I think the point that I come back to is what is what you're saying, which is it is such a mission critical element of success for you as a retailer.

Like when you have people shopping on your site, you need that to work.

You, you know, you need it to work because that's your interaction with your customer and you don't want to tie it to somebody else.

So I think you gotta be very careful about off, you know, offloading this.

And it, I mean, it's a, to me, I don't know, Shelly, do you think it's akin to the Web browser experience 30 years ago when, you know, like Target and Toys R Us were using, you know, Amazon for that?

And in a lot of ways this is gonna become the new interface for how commerce is done when people are showing up on your sites or on your mobile apps, at least as we know it today.

And so you want to have control of your own destiny in that realm.

I think, because I can remember the horror stories of like, yeah, we were getting all the product updates later than Amazon was getting them, you know, because they know how to stay in front of the customer in terms of what the customer wants through search.

You know, generative search like this, you know, if you extrapolate it out.

So, so I, yeah, I, I don't know.

Am I, am I crazy to think like that Is, is that analogy one that you would use?

It is and I think it absolutely is.

And if I'm a retailer or a brand moving forward in the next 10 years.

I'm protecting three things, my brand equity and continuing to build that and invest in it because that's unique to me, my data and my customer relationships.

And if you protect all of those three things, there's probably like moats within that where you can leverage data and the strength of your brand and your customer relationships to continue to grow.

And if any of those becomes highly compromised or used in a different way, that could potentially be problematic.

How does the whole idea of agentic commerce play into those three things you just said?

Well, that one is a big wait and see.

I think I use, you know, chat, GPT and agents when I'm looking for products now and getting information, you know, around products.

And it's very informative and not only what the products are, but how I should use them.

And so I think that that becomes, I mean, it's, it'll disintermediate things like Google.

And that's why the conversation we had earlier with Google wanting to own the shopping ecosystem, I mean, they're being disintermediated with search right now.

And so that becomes very interesting to see how, how powerful could that be?

But I think, you know, so far, I think brands have to invest in agentic search and ensuring that they are able to really come up in search as people are using chat, GPT or open AI to do that.

And the ways that that happens is really through earned media and unearned media placement.

And so, so I think that this is a whole new industry that's coming up in terms of agentic search that brands also have to have as a pillar along with how they're activating their brand in other places.

Yeah, right.

And that's why I said at the outset, like, I think this collection of headlines really explains where the industry is going because, yeah, the search is one thing, but then the agentic transaction, where, you know, the retailer isn't even involved in that anymore, which is what Google's trying to do with Universal Cart, which is what the LLMs are trying to do as well.

You know, that creates a disconnect in terms of the brand's, you know, connection with that consumer.

They're no longer as intimately involved in that customer transaction as they have been in the past.

Depending on where it's happening, of course.

Like some brands will sell on their own on their own website, some will sell on Amazon, you know, that way.

And I, you know, how this all mixes out, none of us knows.

But my God, it's a fascinating time to be in retail.

It really is.