Retailers faced a handful of challenges in 2025: Businesses had to adjust to break-neck advances in generative AI, changing shopping behaviors, and shifting market dynamics. Proactive AI agents began to replace traditional chatbots, shoppers widely adopted new AI-powered search engines to discover and purchase products, and tariffs created mounting obstacles and uncertainty. In 2026, retailers will learn from these trials and lean into strategies that make them more nimble and resilient than ever.
These are our predictions for what’s in store for the retail industry next year.
Retail prediction #1: More consumers will explore agentic shopping
In their infancy, AI chat assistants (like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI mode) served as informational helpers during the customer journey, largely aiding shoppers with product research and comparisons. But things are changing fast. Now, the latest versions function more like interactive shopping agents. For example, ChatGPT recently launched links to purchase products, followed by the capability to checkout without ever leaving the app.
According to research conducted by Salesforce in November 2025, 25% of survey respondents have made an AI-assisted purchase and 86% of those purchases were completed by clicking the link to the product. Why are shoppers turning to these AI chat assistants? Shoppers cite saving time, finding the best price and conducting thorough research as the top reasons to make an AI assisted purchase.
In the near future, more consumers are likely to adopt agentic shopping. According to the same research, 29% of respondents who said that they hadn’t made a purchase with an AI assistant said that they plan to do so in 2026.
What you can do: The first step to ensure that links to your products appear in AI chat assistants is to make sure that your pages are accessible to AI crawlers. Determine how to structure your product data in product detail pages, in Schema Markup and/or through a direct product feed to the AI chat assistant. Review your content strategy to ensure that it is in natural language that appeals to prompts.
Retail prediction #2: Consumers will embrace ecosystem loyalty
An ecosystem loyalty program is a loyalty system that includes multiple brands rather than a single retailer — rewarding customers not just for individual transactions, but for participating across an entire suite of offerings. Instead of earning points or perks from one business, customers earn benefits that apply across a range of connected retail partners, creating a unified value loop that grows as they engage with more parts of it.
Transform Retail in 2026
Nearly half of shoppers (46%) say they value ecosystem loyalty programs, but only 36% of shoppers say that they belong to one. The main reason these systems work? Consumers can earn rewards faster than they would in a traditional loyalty program with a single retailer.
These programs deliver strong benefits to brands — not just consumers. By participating, retailers collect rich consumer data, allowing you to tailor experiences and improve shopper engagement. Partnerships also allow you to reach new audiences and broaden your customer base in ways you might not be able to on your own.
What you can do: Identify what services, products, or experiences your customers use outside of your brand to find relevant partners. Determine the cost-sharing and revenue-sharing structure amongst the partners and ensure you have the right technology to ensure a seamless integration of loyalty systems.
Retail prediction #3: 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.
What you can do: Begin your proactive service journey by mapping the critical moments in your customer lifecycle where early intervention could prevent frustration or churn. Leverage the data you already have—order management, usage analytics, and historical support patterns—to build simple alerts or trigger-based communications that reach customers at the right time with the right guidance. Start small with one or two use cases, measure the results, and gradually expand your proactive service program based on what resonates most with your customers.
Retail prediction #4: More retailers will adopt Super Agents to streamline supply chains
According to Prologis Supply Chain Outlook 2026, supply chain executives list economic variability, tariff increases, geoinstability and cybersecurity threats as the top concerns when it comes to disrupting supply chain operations. However, it is difficult for retailers to respond to these fast moving issues because their supply chains have been built over decades with legacy technology.
To build more responsive supply chains, retailers are turning to super agents to automate and speed up processes. A super agent is a type of AI agent that divides up and assigns tasks to specialized AI agents. The super agent can also assign tasks to humans where needed. For example, a super agent can orchestrate processes related to warehouse deliveries. If a delivery has damaged goods, one AI agent reports the issue, another AI agent sends a chargeback to the supplier and another AI agent alerts finance. The super agent coordinates these tasks amongst those specialized agents.
What you can do: Identify workflows that are repeated and highly manual for super agents to automate. Work with your cross functional teams, such as IT, Procurement and Supply Chain, to ensure that you have proper governance, data integrations and feedback channels.
Retail prediction #5: RFID reaches a tipping point
More retailers are embracing RFID technology thanks to a reduction in cost and an improvement in the technology. The traditional bar code technology requires store associates to manually scan bar codes but RFID tags can be scanned in bulk without a direct line of sight, allowing for faster and more accurate inventory counts. This saves store associate’s time that can be spent on other tasks, such as helping customers.
The greater level of inventory accuracy creates a lot of benefits. It can help prevent out of stocks and shortens the time for product replenishment, which could eventually be fully automated with supply chain AI agents. Thanks to the high accuracy of RFID, retailers can trace products closely, reducing shrink, false scanning and theft.
RFID creates better customer experiences. According to Salesforce’s Connected Shoppers’ report, 59% of shoppers have checked on a retailer’s website to see if the product is available in store and 52% have made an online purchase to pick up at a store. RFID tags ensure that the inventory is visible to shoppers who want to shop the store online. RFID tags also make checkout better, helping employees move items faster through checkout or enabling a self-service checkout experience.
What you can do: Despite the decrease in costs, implementing RFID is still expensive and complex. Start with a pilot to determine if the investment is worthwhile. Choose the product category, store and hardware (tags and readers). Define the KPIs to track, such as improving inventory accuracy, increased operational efficiency or improved omnichannel fulfillment. A successful pilot means scaling the technology across more products and stores while increasing the investment in staff training.
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