One thing this blog made clear, he noted, “is that agentic buying should be seen as a broad process and not just about executing the transaction; there is discovery, selection, comparison, negotiation, and so forth, and we are already seeing AI and agents being used in the process.”
However, he observed, “I think we have seen more effort from agents on the sell side of the process. For instance, Amazon can help someone discover products with its AI. Salesforce discussed how its Agentforce Sales now enables agents to help customers learn more about an offering. If [they] click on a promotion and begin to ask questions, the agent can them help them through a decision-making process.”
Caution urged
On the buy side, he said, “we are not at the agent stage quite yet, but I am very sure that AI and chatbots are playing a role in commerce already. For instance, I am sure that procurement teams out there are already using chat tools to help winnow down vendors before issuing RFIs or RFPs. And probably using that same tool to write the RFP. On the consumer side, it is very much the same, as comparison shopping is a use case highlighted by agentic browsers like Comet.”
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