Beyond the chatbot: What NRF 2026 revealed about retail’s intelligent future

NRF 2026 (the National Retail Federation's annual Big Show) was the most well-attended and energetic I’ve seen in years. The conference floor was bustling and AI was everywhere, with the conversation taking a notable turn from experimentation to execution.

The focus is now on operationalizing AI across the shopping journey, backed by solid data foundations and while maintaining trust and the human element. NRF 2026 made it clear that retail is in the middle of a platform shift driven by agentic AI. From a customer perspective, it offered a promising snapshot of how AI is already changing and going to change the way we shop.

Preparing for agentic commerce

Agentic commerce felt like it crossed a real threshold this year. From an ecommerce perspective, we are rapidly moving beyond agents that simply assist shoppers to those that can actually buy things. And as agents become participants in the commerce ecosystem, retailers have a lot to think about:

• With agents doing the shopping, how do you stay connected to human customers and represent your brand to earn their loyalty and trust?
• How do you market to AI agents and price for agent-driven transactions?
• How do you expose product, inventory, order and customer data in ways machines can understand and act on securely?

Open standards and partnerships emerged as a key part of the answer. There was a strong emphasis on interoperability over lock-in, driven by the reality that no single technology provider can support every agent use case. Google’s introduction of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) was a concrete example of this direction.

UCP is Google’s attempt to create a common, standardized language for commerce actions. It allows AI agents to understand, compare and execute transactions. As AI moves from recommending to doing, UCP lays the groundwork for an agent-first economy.

Customer experience remains the anchor

For all the talk of agents and platforms, customer experience continues to be the anchor for AI in retail. Most of the proven and high-value AI use cases still center on reducing friction for customers and particularly in customer service, product discovery and recommendations, and guided shopping. These were consistently cited as areas delivering returns and impact today.

Much of this progress is invisible to shoppers when it works well. Better recommendations, finding the precise product that fits your vision and solves your problem, then buying it frictionlessly — none of that feels revolutionary. It’s expected and that is exactly the point.

Where retailers still have work to do is closing the gap between the conversational experiences consumers now have with general-purpose AI tools and the experiences they have on retail sites. Shoppers are comfortable describing intent, style, and constraints in natural language: “I’m re-decorating my kitchen in cottage-core style, I want hand towels and accessories to fit that.”

The gap exists because often, retailers are cautious about giving their AI tools too much freedom. They need AI to represent their brand voice and values – they don’t want off-brand recommendations or products they don’t carry being suggested. Unfortunately for customers, that caution creates flat, frustrating experiences. The technology exists to deliver something better. A more natural and helpful retail “agent” experience is coming. To get there, retailers must strike the right balance between brand control and genuine conversational intelligence.

Opportunities for intelligent experiences

The conversations at NRF point to several areas where retailers can build competitive advantages through intelligent, human-first experiences:

Context-aware assistance. The help customers need varies based on where they are in their journey. Someone researching products needs different support than someone checking out or tracking a shipment. Retailers have an advantage over general-purpose AI tools because they can provide persistent, context-rich conversations that know what’s in your cart, what you’ve purchased before and what stage you’re in. There's an exciting opportunity for intelligent assistance woven throughout the experience.

Brand storytelling that agents understand. As agents start recommending products, retailers need to ensure their brand voice and product stories are discoverable by these systems. This is about telling the story of why your product is the right choice in ways that generative AI can understand and relay. The move from traditional Search Engine Optimization toward Agent Experience Optimization and Generative Engine Optimization is already underway. For retailers with strong brand identities and high-quality imagery, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge around maintaining control of their assets and narrative.

Seamless physical and digital integration. The most sophisticated retailers understand that customers don’t think in channels. They move fluidly between phone, web and store. Creating truly connected experiences means building technology foundations that can support this fluidity. Many retail technology stacks are further ahead than other industries because they’ve had to be, but there’s still work to do in creating seamless handoffs and unified customer views across every touchpoint.

We have seen continued growth of “showroom” style physical stores where customers can go to touch and feel the products they’re thinking about buying. These stores don’t stock inventory in the traditional way, instead focusing on brand connection and allowing customers to “see it in real life” before ordering it at home.

Human-centered intelligent retail

The AI progress is dizzying, but at the end of the day, retail is about the customer. Start there. What does the customer want? How can we make their experience better? If AI agents are where customers want to shop, fighting that trend won’t work. But neither will ceding control entirely. The key is to create systems and partnerships that let retailers maintain their brand relationships and customer data while meeting consumers where they are.

It’s been said that all purchases are driven by two desires: identity confirmation or transformation. It’s perhaps a bit simplistic, but it's an interesting thought exercise. When you’re shopping for a new USB cord on Amazon, are you really hoping to be transformed? Maybe not, unless it’s about transforming into a person who has a working phone charger. Maybe it’s about confirming your identity as someone who values convenience and your own time. Whichever way you slice it, the purchase reveals something about you and your preferences.

At its core, retail remains a human business. NRF 2026 showed an industry moving forward and changing fast. I’m excited to see where it goes next.