E-commerce Predictions 2026

“The Internet is about to get paywalled and AI-gated like never before.”

Information is power (and money), and that information is about to get paywalled and AI-gated like never before on the Internet. AI companies are creating an unsustainable environment for publishers, and the best ones aren't going to continue writing for the LLMs for free.

The beginning of Google's transition from legacy search results to AI results as its primary interface marks the end of the Wild West days of AI, the end of Google's established relationship with publishers, and the end of traditional publisher business models online. Get ready!

Paul E. Drecksler, Editor of Shopifreaks

“Sellers will lose control of pricing.”

I believe we are getting very close to a tipping point. Pricing today is chaotic, unpredictable, and extremely inefficient. In 2026, retailers will have no choice but to step in and change how pricing works for 3P sellers.

Right now the situation looks like this:

• Amazon, Walmart, and other marketplaces constantly compare prices with each other.
• They also provide built-in repricers for sellers.
• Many sellers use their own third-party repricers.
• Updates lag behind, rules conflict with each other, and everyone reacts to everyone else.

The result is a giant loop: prices jump up and down, repricers fight with each other, and buyers see inconsistent pricing throughout the day.

This is confusing for customers and expensive for retailers. Buy Box fights burn margin, price manipulation before holidays is common, and small technical delays can create big swings.

There is already a simple model that solves this: the 1P structure.

On the 1P side, Amazon and Walmart decide the final price shown to the buyer. They pay sellers the agreed cost and take full control of retail pricing. No wars, no loops, no chaos.

I believe marketplaces will bring a version of this model into 3P.

AI-driven pricing will likely be introduced, but for the AI to work properly, marketplaces will need full control. That means no external repricers, no competing rules, and no price wars. They want predictable pricing and a better take rate.

One logical question is: if sellers lose pricing control, how will marketplaces decide who receives the order?

This is where I think we will see “seller credit scores.”

Amazon, Walmart, and other platforms already score sellers in many ways: on-time shipping, cancellations, packaging quality, content quality, customer sentiment, responsiveness, and return behavior.

Today, every marketplace uses its own method. The next phase will be more unified scoring, and this score will become one of the main factors in routing orders.

Pricing becomes just one input.

Seller trust and performance become the priority.

We already see early signs of this direction. Walmart has a program called Walmart-funded incentives, which fixes situations where Walmart believes a buyer will convert at a lower price, but the seller cannot or does not want to drop their price. Walmart simply covers the difference. The goal is to show the buyer the most attractive price without depending on the seller’s repricer.

This type of model only works when the marketplace has more control over pricing.

I believe 2026 may be the year this shift begins.

Daniel Sodkiewicz, Co-founder, GeekSeller (Blog Post)

“OpenAI is not going to launch ads in the core ChatGPT chat this decade, at least not in the conventional sense.”

Yes, some guy saw some code with the words “bazaar” and “search ad” in it but let's look at everything we know, even before Sam Altman's Code Red:

• OpenAI's app CEO comes from Facebook and has hired an armada of former Meta folks. Very few people with AdWords or hardcore Google or Amazon ads roots work at OpenAI
• Sam Altman waxes poetic about Instagram ads while decrying most forms of digital advertising
• OpenAI is very publicly committed to burning >$100B over the next few years. They are not going to YOLO a half-baked ads offering that threatens ChatGPT to close a fraction of that gap.

What I venture will happen is a wealth of new ads experimentation on ancillary surfaces such as Pulse, Sora, Deep Shopping Research and new adjacent products OpenAI builds. Could also see them playing around with paid context.

With Atlas, OpenAI holds a massive intent collection machine that it can use to personalize ads outside of its core product, a TAM that will only increase as OpenAI builds more consumer applications and “opt-in” commercial pathways such as the aforementioned Deep Shopping research.

Net net, OpenAI will build a massive ads business but uh, it ain't gonna be slapping a sponsored tag on some ChatGPT responses and SKUs and calling it a day.

Mike Mallazzo, Ads + Agentic Commerce, PayPal (LinkedIn)

“As AI agents increasingly guide how people shop, search, and learn, visibility on the web will come down to one thing: being the answer.”

In this next phase of the internet, brands won’t just compete for clicks — they’ll compete to become the verified source AI systems reference when responding to users. That requires clean data, structured content, and precise information that AI can easily interpret and serve.

2026 will mark the rise of this new “answer economy,” where authority is earned through accuracy and clarity, not volume. The brands that win will be those whose websites are built to deliver fast, factual, machine-readable answers — giving both people and AI exactly what they’re looking for.

Darcy Kurtz, CMO, WP Engine (Submission)

“Power and Water Shortages Disrupt Global Chip and AI Infrastructure Expansion“

In 2026, environmental stressors will dominate tech infrastructure headlines as droughts and grid strain emerge as critical chokepoints. Semiconductor fabrication hubs, especially in water-stressed regions like Taiwan and the southwestern U.S., face mounting operational limits due to prolonged drought conditions and depleted reservoirs. Water-intensive chip manufacturing processes are forced to scale back or relocate, causing ripple effects throughout the global supply chain. Simultaneously, the surge in AI demand—driven by record 2025 capex—pushes hyperscalers and data center operators into uncharted territory. Power availability becomes the gating factor for new deployments.

Richard Barnett, CMO, Supplyframe (Submission)

“Fraud becomes one of the most expensive line items in ecommerce”

In 2026, fraud formally transitions from a nuisance cost to one of the largest operating expenses in ecommerce, reshaping margins and business models across the industry. Merchants now lose roughly three dollars for every dollar of fraud once chargebacks, labor, fees, and lost goods are included, and digital channels account for the majority of losses. Ecommerce companies experience significantly higher attack rates than brick-and-mortar retailers, with nearly half of fraud stemming from new account creation, fake identities, and synthetic customer profiles. As attackers automate fraud with AI, scraped datasets, and SMS phishing, losses are projected to reach $40 billion in the United States by 2027 — making fraud a permanent financial pressure rather than an occasional threat.

Dan Holden, Chief Information Security Officer, Commerce (Submission)

“We will see marketplaces compete for the right 3P sellers, and some power shift from platforms to brands.”

I predict some power shifting from platforms back to brands, as marketplaces will be competing for the right 3P sellers. Solid alternatives like Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop and agentic commerce mean premium brands have choices and don't need to be everywhere. I believe platforms must now work harder to attract these sellers who bring unique value, quality, and a loyal customer base, resulting in better terms and services for the best brands.

François Maingret, E-commerce Analyst (Submission)

“Google continues to crush in 2026.”

OpenAI feels the heat. Doubles down into becoming a social company, lots of features that you'd think a Meta would create.

Greg Isenberg, CEO, Late Checkout (LinkedIn)

“Agentic shopping is unlikely to scale in 2026…”

…as long as AI systems remain optimized for objective specs rather than the subjective experiential queries (color shade, texture, comfort, fit, cut, finish, feel, etc.) that drive real purchase decisions, especially among women. This gap will widen the gender divide in usage and limit agentic commerce to low-stakes, male-skewing retail categories.

Heather Hershey, Research Director, Worldwide Digital Commerce Strategy, IDC (Submission)

“The Platform Upgrade Year: Time-to-Change Becomes a KPI”

2026 marks the year where time-to-change becomes the defining performance metric. Tariff shifts, surcharges, and supply swings now demand instantaneous adjustments, not months-long projects. The most forward-thinking teams are moving off legacy monolithic platforms that slow releases and trap data, in favor of modern architectures that allow for rapid iteration and integration.

These upgrades aren’t just about site performance, they’re about business agility. Whether it’s onboarding a newly acquired brand, launching a new storefront, or localizing an experience for a specific region, modern platforms give teams the freedom to execute without replatforming every time. The fastest organizations focus on safe, rollback-ready changes and measurable deployment speed. Every minute saved in change propagation translates directly into better margins and stronger resilience.

Lance Owide, VP and GM of B2B, BigCommerce (Submission)

“Bundling will outpace pure subscriber growth.”

Customers increasingly prefer deep relationships with a few brands rather than shallow ones with many. Customers with multiple subscriptions at sign-up retain at 76% compared with 40% for a single subscription. Even customers who upgrade to multiple subscriptions post-signup retain at 52%. Brands that promote bundled subscriptions will drive both higher average order value and better retention.

Charles Rosenblatt, CCO, Butter Payments (Submission)

“Inflation will be north of 3% in 2026.”

There’s no political will to cut spending, which means continued deficit spending, which means inflation. This is sticky for the next decade, not just 2026. My advice: position your portfolio and your business for a persistent inflationary environment.

Bill DAlessandro, VP of Corporate Development, FoodScience LLC (LinkedIn)

“Dynamic Pricing hits Main Street.”

The “Uber surge” model comes to your grocery aisle. With Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) going mainstream, physical retail prices become fluid. The price of milk drops as it nears expiration; the price of umbrellas goes up when it rains. The “fixed price” is a relic of the paper era.

Josef Buryan, CMO, Groupon (LinkedIn)

“AI is going to increase time spent on e-commerce, not decrease it.”

While AI search tools and browsers are making transactions easier, they simply can’t replace the human thrill of discovery. While AI browsers will take on a new role in shaping the customer experience, they won’t replace all of the ways we shop and interact with brands today. Digital window shopping will remain a core part of online behavior as we browse, compare, and imagine. AI will enhance this curiosity, creating richer, more engaging experiences, and the scroll will endure because people will always enjoy browsing, not merely buying.

Jonathan Hyman, Co-founder & CTO, Braze (LinkedIn)

“Seventy-five percent of enterprise B2B companies will increase budgets for influencer relations.”

External influencers such as analysts and subject-matter experts are playing a bigger role in B2B buying decisions and the buying network — buyers increasingly rely on them for fact-based insights. In 2026, most B2B organizations will increase budgets for influencer engagement. This increase is down to recognition of the power that external influencers wield to build trust, especially in an increasingly AI-powered discovery environment. This isn’t about chasing trends; it’s about aligning GTM strategy and activation to surface meaningful buying signals and drive measurable impact.

Renee Irion, Principal Analyst, Forrester (Blog Post)

“Ecommerce enters an identity ‘dark forest' where bots, deepfakes, and synthetic customers look real.”

Retailers are entering a digital “dark forest” in which legitimate shoppers and AI-generated impostors are nearly indistinguishable. Automated traffic surpassed human traffic for the first time in 2024, and nearly one-third of all web activity is now driven by malicious bots that mimic human browsing patterns.

Deepfake-enabled fraud has surged at triple-digit rates, with businesses reporting average losses approaching $500,000 per incident. As synthetic identities, hyper-realistic bots, and AI-generated customer behaviors proliferate, the traditional signals retailers rely on to verify identity — device fingerprints, behavior patterns, transaction histories — lose their reliability.

The next era of ecommerce security will depend on detecting customer intent rather than validating static identity attributes.

Dan Holden, Chief Information Security Officer, Commerce (Submission)

“Subscription management companies bite the dust as Stripe dominates.”

Why? Long-term, I see the value proposition for standalone subscription management platforms eroding.

Stripe is rolling out its own Merchant of Record and expanding its App Store to cement itself at the center of the subscription payments ecosystem. Shopify did the same thing in ecommerce, and it worked.

What happens next is fairly predictable.

1. Stripe continues to capture more and more companies like OpenAI, Substack, Atlassian on Stripe Billing (already happening)
2. They pull in an entirely new wave of businesses migrating off in-app purchases and onto Stripe-managed subscriptions (already starting)
3. And once Stripe owns both payments and subscription logic, it becomes the default place companies start.

Which means more companies will start on Stripe Billing. As they grow, instead of switching to Recurly or Chargebee for more advanced subscription management, they’ll stay put.

Philip Pages, CEO, Redux Payments (LinkedIn)

“Massive layoffs in banking, insurance, accounting, law, and programming driven by AI.”

Banking will be one of the earliest and hardest-hit industries. Why? Because so much of it is rules-based, repetitive, and document-driven, perfect for AI.

Expect similar cuts in:

• Insurance
• Entry-level accounting
• Junior legal work
• Back-office programming
• Customer service and compliance roles

This isn’t about AI “helping workers.” It’s about replacing roles that no longer make economic sense to keep.

A 15–20% workforce reduction across these sectors by end of 2026 is not extreme, it’s conservative.

Jim Csek, CPA, CMA (LinkedIn)

“AI will transform the shipping industry as we know it.”

In 2026, I predict AI will become the operational backbone of U.S. logistics.

It won’t happen overnight — but it will happen much faster than most expect.

The logistics industry has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies. But as U.S. e-commerce continues to grow and parcel volumes are projected to increase roughly 20–25% over the next five years, static pricing models and highly manual processes will no longer scale.

Today, AI already powers routing, pricing, fraud prevention, customer support automation, and delivery-instruction compliance. In 2026, its role will expand across forecasting, real-time network balancing, and dynamic rate cards. It will optimize for speed, reliability, and cost — at the parcel level.

There is no exaggeration here. AI is the biggest technological revolution since the invention of the internet. The companies that understand it — and apply it across their businesses — will unlock massive gains in cost and performance. Those that don’t will fall sharply behind.

Itamar Zur, CEO and Co-founder, Veho (Blog Post)

“Conversational Interfaces Will Go Native”

In 2026, conversational interfaces will move from novelty side features to core navigation patterns across ecommerce platforms. Rather than bolting chatbots onto existing site architectures, retailers will rebuild their discovery experiences around natural language interaction.

What This Means:

• Traditional search bars become the arbiter of experiences and recognize when conversation adds value versus when speed matters most. Direct searches lead straight to products for shoppers who know what they want, while ambiguous queries transition into guided dialogs. The interface adapts to intent rather than forcing conversation.
• Conversational interfaces occupy central screen real estate, creating dynamic discovery experiences that reshape and respond as shoppers refine their needs
• UI patterns move to a mix of search-and-filter and ask-and-refine
• Success metrics expand beyond conversion to include engagement and discovery satisfaction

After years of chatbot experiments, retailers have learned what works. The technology has matured to handle complex product catalogs, understand context across conversation turns, and maintain brand voice while being genuinely helpful. Consumers who’ve grown comfortable with LLM tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity now expect this level of interaction from shopping experiences.

This fundamentally changes how products are discovered online, moving away from category-heavy navigation toward intent-based discovery that mirrors how people actually shop in physical stores or describe what they’re looking for to friends.

Peter Curran, GM of Commerce at Coveo (Blog Post)

“eCommerce is going to become more and more real-time.”

What I mean by real-time is that it’s not just about a single channel or a tactic. You have to be engaging with your customers across all the different channels and places where they engage with you. It’s about being present and responsive wherever customers are interacting with you, not relying on one channel. Right across the different channels and places customers engage, so social channels, chat, your website, and live streams. You have to be everywhere all at once!

Gareth Cummings, CEO, eDesk (Blog Post)

“Zero-Click Commerce”

AI is rewriting the rules of search, and for retailers in 2026, this could mean less website traffic and fewer opportunities to sell. The solution will involve adapting selling strategies to be AI-friendly. This includes building feeds that chatbots and agents can interact with, and ensuring product listings contain the specific data that algorithms are looking for. No one really knows what the long-term impact of zero-click will be, but keeping ahead of the curve on the latest developments will be essential for anyone selling online in 2026.

Bernard Marr, Author & Business Thought Leader (LinkedIn)

“Old methods to target consumers no longer work”

The consumer path to purchase is getting increasingly complex. Brands can no longer rely on old tactics if they want to appeal to their target audiences. Instead, they need to look to new technologies that help them utilise the data they have to ensure effective targeting.

The only tool that can process the vast amount of data needed to feed campaigns in this way is AI, but it’s a black box, and requires marketers to let go of a bit of control. In traditional marketing, we have been able to define personas, but AI goes further, detecting insights on a much more granular, user-by-user basis.

If marketers are willing to use it, [AI] can clarify whether someone should be targeted by an ad and the likelihood of their conversion. Its ability to recognise hidden patterns and make precise decisions based on user intent, all in a millionth of a heartbeat, can ensure campaigns remain relevant while increasing ROAS.

Denise Cornelissen, Head of Product Marketing, RTB House (Econsultancy)

“Mid-market DTC brands will go physical through pop-ups and IRL events”

2026 will be the year that eight-figure digitally-native brands go physical at scale. They won’t do this through massive retail rollouts, but rather strategic pop-ups, wholesale partnerships, flagship stores, and IRL events that drive discovery and community.

The pure-play DTC model is hitting diminishing returns. Digital acquisition costs continue to rise (Meta CPM up 22.58% YoY, Google CPA up 17.25% YoY), and consumers increasingly crave tangible brand experiences. Adding physical retail experience doesn’t diminish the online retail, but it does expand the customer journey in a way that unlocks acquisition channels that traditional paid media can’t reach.  

Allie Mistakidis, Content Writer, Triple Whale (Blog Post)

“The pretzel-­shaped shopping journey.”

The traditional notion of a universal, linear shopping journey that all consumers dutifully follow is already disintegrating, and by 2026, the concept will be completely outdated.

Due to the proliferation of wearable devices and technology, smart TVs, connected cars and household appliances, beacons, and other technologies, the consumer journey in 2026 will increasingly look like a pretzel that twists, turns, and loops back on itself. Consumers can start and end their shopping experiences on a mobile platform, in-store, or online. It is a fluid movement that by 2026 will be even harder for retailers to keep up with or predict because it will include a growing number of devices and touchpoints.

One of the key conditions for success for retailers in 2026 will be their ability not only to keep track of users across a growing number of devices and touchpoints, but also to figure out how to effectively measure which of those are most effective at driving sales. This will imply a growing level of sophistication in how sales are attributed to the different marketing touchpoints.

Ovum + Criteo (Report)

“Tariffs Become the New Normal”

Perhaps no theme generates more consensus than this: the tariff regime is here to stay. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are bringing in close to $300 billion in revenue annually, and while they may face legal challenges (Barclays expects the Supreme Court to deem them illegal), the effective tariff rate has peaked at 12.1%—the highest since 1934.

The economic impact is being absorbed more gracefully than many feared. UBS expects a “soft patch” in early 2026 as tariffs affect U.S. prices, followed by a broadening and strengthening of growth from Q2 onward. But the structural shift is profound: trade may reroute permanently, supply chains are diversifying, and the U.S. is explicitly using tariffs as a tool of economic leverage.

Visual Capitalist (Report)

“The Creator Economy Evolves Into Co-Creation.”

Influencer marketing has matured. In 2026, the shift is from paying creators to post, to co-creating with creators – product, campaign, community. Creators are becoming strategic partners, not simply reach vehicles.

Academic research confirms that influencer marketing remains important, yet the landscape is shifting toward deeper partnerships and ownership of creative strategy. Brands will increasingly structure programs where creators ideate product features, create limited-edition lines, or participate in campaign planning. The value: authenticity, niche affinity, and stronger performance than generic sponsorship.

Takeaway: Shift from “influencer as amplifier” to “creator as partner.” Embed creators in product, marketing, and measurement cycles, and treat them as co-owners of the brand experience.

Greg Jarboe, President, SEO-PR (Blog Post)

“A dentsu or WPP acquisition will trigger a wave of agency reviews.”

The era of blockbuster holding company deals is far from over. Following Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG, Forrester predicts that Havas will acquire dentsu’s international operations. Alternatively, WPP may restructure for a sale to private equity or Accenture. Either scenario will prompt marketers to reassess their agency relationships. In fact, 85% of US B2C marketing executives plan to review their media agencies in 2026. This marks a significant uptick from assignments governed by three-to-five-year MSAs — six major brands reviewed media assignments in 2021, and 20 did so in 2023. When the big six condense to the big three, their emphasis on technology, data, media scale, and products will further push agencies to operate as purveyors as much as providers.

Jay Pattisall, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester (Blog Post)

“Agentic capabilities will be far more pervasive and mature.”

We will see:

• More partnerships between AI platforms and payment, loyalty and marketplace ecosystems following early moves like Perplexity x PayPal. These integrations will enable shoppers to move from search → evaluation → transaction seamlessly within a single conversational flow and these activities will increasingly be done on a consumer’s behalf.
• Greater maturity emerging in AI agents, enabling persistent shopping companions that retain context across sessions, missions and life moments, understand preferences and patterns over time, and build the trust needed for consumers to rely on agentic systems to take on more of the shopping workload.
• Maturity built in multi-step task execution, where AI combines actions such as building a shortlist, comparing bundles, checking availability, applying loyalty benefits and completing checkout to deliver the end-to-end shopping process with little human involvement.

Teresa Sperti, Founder & Director, Arktic Fox (LinkedIn)

“The ‘Trend Loyalty' Threat”

A dangerous nuance has emerged in 2025: the rise of “Trend Loyalty.” Approximately 14% of consumers now fit this volatile profile. These are shoppers who are loyal to a viral moment, a TikTok aesthetic, or a specific “drop,” but not to the brand itself. They arrive in a swarm, buy the viral SKU, and vanish.

Brands mistaking “Trend Loyalty” for “Deep Loyalty” are finding themselves with massive churn rates in Q2 and Q3. The strategic imperative for 2026 is to build mechanisms—VIP tiers, community access, subscription models—that instantly convert these “Trend” shoppers into “True Loyalists” before the social media cycle moves on.

Ben Salomon, Growth Marketing Manager, Yotpo (Report)

“Problems for hyper-personalisation.”

With hyper-personalisation, you’re creating an experience on the fly, without anyone having reviewed it in advance, that the receiver is experiencing for the first time. That’s a risk, and marketers will still struggle with that.

I predict in 2026 we’ll start seeing early iterations of real hyper-personalisation, but not the full vision yet. For now, we can expect to see people doing the kind of dynamic personalisation we do today with text, but with images – what we might see first are the next generation of ‘put your logo on a t-shirt’ kind of personalisation, rather than fully different experiences for different people.

That’s a much more complex challenge, and I don’t think we’re ready for it yet – not just in terms of AI, but also in terms of defining what counts as a good or acceptable experience specification.

Tal Lev-Ami, CTO, Cloudinary (Retail Systems)

“Voice commerce becoming mainstream.”

Voice assistants have moved beyond simple queries to become shopping interfaces. Customers use Alexa to reorder household essentials, ask Google Assistant for product comparisons, and request Siri to add items to shopping lists.

This shift represents more than convenience. Voice interactions generate unique intent signals that reveal purchase timing, brand preferences, and household consumption patterns in ways traditional browsing cannot capture.

Smart retailers recognise voice queries as early indicators of purchase intent.

When someone asks “What's the best eco-friendly washing powder?” or “Reorder my usual coffee,” these moments provide predictive insights about immediate and future buying behaviour.

The connection to predictive commerce becomes clear when voice intent feeds into real-time decision systems. Voice queries can trigger personalised offers, adjust inventory forecasting, and inform cross-selling opportunities before customers even reach traditional shopping channels.

Voice commerce is creating new touchpoints that inform smarter decision-making across all customer interactions.

Sean Edwards, Content Manager, Sherwen (Blog Post)

“Brands will adopt more proactive customer service to encourage retention.”

According to Salesforce research, shoppers reported the worst experience they can have with a brand is poor customer service —higher than out-of-stock products or damaged goods. Customer service plays a significant role in a consumer’s loyalty to your business.

One way to avoid poor customer service experiences? Proactively reach out to customers about potential issues before the shopper ever realizes there’s a problem. In fact, 77% of consumers said that proactive customer service makes them more likely to be loyal to a brand or retailer. But there’s a significant gap: 72% of customers say that most brands and retailers respond to service issues reactively. 

The most popular type of proactive customer service that consumers would like to receive is help if they are struggling with a product or checkout page. Shoppers also want to be notified in advance if there’s an issue with their order, such as a delay or missing item.

Michelle Grant, Researcher, Salesforce (Blog Post)

“AI Will Move into the Store”

While most of the AI buzz has been centered on the digital experience, look for consumers and store associates to leverage it in brick-and-mortar locations throughout 2026.

The most common applications of AI in the physical store will be clienteling and loyalty to enhance the customer experience and inventory management and training to streamline the employee experience. The data and intelligence from these technologies will be accessed via mobile devices to keep store associates on the sales floor—engaging shoppers during the check-in process rather than waiting for the check-out process.

Personalized engagement when customers need it most also enables retailers to capture some of the richest intent data available across all channels. While beneficial customer information—like their profile, preferences, and history—is traditionally lost in the store, retailers will use AI to increasingly capture and activate this structured and unstructured data in 2026.

Rob Garf, Retail Expert & Consumer Strategist (LinkedIn)

“Increased supply chain transparency with Digital Product Passports.”

Think of it as a digital birth certificate for every product, detailing where it was made, what it’s made of, and how it can be reused or recycled.

Driven by the European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), DPPs are set to become mandatory for certain product categories beginning in 2026 and 2027. These digital records will accompany items throughout their entire lifecycle, from raw materials to end-of-life, helping consumers make informed, sustainable choices.

For brands, this is both a compliance challenge and a storytelling opportunity. Consumers increasingly want to know the “why” behind what they buy; where it came from, who made it, and what impact it has. With DPP, a customer will be able to scan a QR code on a sweater and see its full history: which factory produced it, how much carbon it generated, and how to recycle or repair it later.

By 2026, expect to see Digital Product Passports popping up across Europe and beyond. And once consumers get used to this level of visibility, there’s no going back.

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager, Akeneo (Blog Post)

“Discovery is no longer owned: It’s borrowed.“

We’ve entered an era where your customers meet your brand everywhere, and mostly not via your own channels first. TikTok Shop, creators, retail media, marketplaces, AI-driven search,, LLMs, even group chats: The upstream discovery layer has fractured.

The winners in 2026 won’t try to pull people back; they’ll design content systems that travel. Modular, native, creator-powered, and repurposed quickly across channels.

If you’re still treating discovery as “top of funnel,” 2026 will be unbearably expensive.

Irem Isik, Head of Marketing, Storyly (LinkedIn)

“Brands and DTC Brands realizing ‘Knowledge graphs' are critical to take a potential shopper to a repeat customer.”

Knowledge graphs give AI agents structured memory and the ability to understand relationships between entities—customers, products, preferences, behaviors. For brands trying to convert shoppers into repeat customers, this is huge. Knowledge graphs enable agents to remember that you wear size 10, hate high-tops, and only buy on sale—then use all that context to personalize every interaction. They connect data across silos and provide the context agents need for better reasoning and decision-making.

In agentic commerce, knowledge graphs are the infrastructure that turns random shopper data into actual customer relationships. They're how agents “remember” you and get smarter over time. Brands that build strong knowledge graphs will have agents that can actually drive retention and LTV. Those that don't will just be noise in the feed.

Kanch Vivek, Data Engineering & Analytics Leadership, Meta (Submission)

“Social Media shifts to ‘Predictive Virality.'”

We stop chasing trends. Platforms stop just detecting what is trending and start forecasting it. AI models will tell creators what will go viral next Tuesday based on velocity patterns. Marketing becomes less about creativity and more about arbitrage on predicted attention spikes.

Josef Buryan, CMO, Groupon (LinkedIn)

“Retailers and distributors will prioritize personalization and curating the right product assortment over sheer number of SKUs.”

I believe many retailers, distributors and marketplaces will prioritize curation, customer experience and expertise over sheer SKU count. Many businesses, such as Etsy or eBay, realized they can't be Amazon, and the rise of agentic commerce makes competition much tougher. Curation becomes a new differentiator. I anticipate marketplaces will get more restrictive about 3P seller admission to protect their brand and avoid regulatory issues, giving more weight to quality and trust.

François Maingret, E-commerce Analyst (Submission)

“Instant Commerce Matures Into ‘Instant Expectation'”

The speed race is over. Consumers already expect things to be fast; now they expect to act instantly and trust what they see.

AI can deliver convenience, but authenticity and trust still decide conversion. In 2026, shoppers will expect to discover, evaluate, and purchase directly from wherever they are, whether that’s a TikTok feed, a product review, or an AI assistant recommendation, and to do it with the same confidence they have when checking out on a trusted brand site.

This evolution puts digital wallets at the center of trust and conversion. When payment is instant and identity is verified, the brand’s credibility travels with the shopper across channels. Patagonia, Glossier, and Apple are setting the tone by connecting identity, payment, and preference seamlessly into every interaction.

At the same time, brands are realizing that “instant” is no longer just about fulfillment, it’s about timing and anticipation. Predictive commerce will surface products when they are most relevant, not when brands decide to promote them. Your running app might suggest new shoes after your 300th mile, or your skincare line might prompt a reorder the moment your product runs low.

And as agentic interfaces evolve, user experience itself will begin to mirror this predictive behavior. Instead of waiting for clicks, sites and apps will start to guide shoppers toward likely next actions through contextual CTAs, conversational prompts, and adaptive product recommendations that feel intuitive rather than pushy. The best experiences will feel more like a dialogue than a sales funnel.

Authenticity, trust, and timing together will define what “instant” truly means.

What’s Next:

Expect the next wave of commerce innovation to combine agentic checkout, predictive UX, and trust-driven payment design.

Digital wallets like Apple Pay, Shop Pay, and Google Wallet will serve as the connective tissue between discovery, validation, and conversion across any channel. Predictive commerce will move mainstream, powered by AI-driven reordering, contextual wallet notifications, and dynamic prompts that adapt to shopper intent in real time.

Interfaces will evolve too, shifting from static pages to predictive experiences where CTAs, recommendations, and abandoned cart flows are shaped by what the customer is most likely to do next. The brands that design for anticipation, not reaction, will set the new standard for “instant expectation.”

Al Williams, SVP and GM of B2C, Commerce (Submission)