How Autonomous Shopping Could Reshape the App Economy
While headlines about Trump’s tariffs dominate tech news cycles, a more transformative force is quietly developing in the background: AI-powered autonomous shopping agents. These digital assistants, designed to order products and services on behalf of consumers without human intervention, represent what may be the next significant disruption to the retail landscape and app economy.
Amazon’s Strategic Move with “Buy for Me”
Amazon recently unveiled a new agentic AI-powered shopping feature called “Buy for Me”, which allows users to purchase products from third-party websites without leaving the Amazon Shopping app. The feature “uses agentic AI to help customers seamlessly purchase from other brands within the familiar Amazon Shopping app, while also giving brands increased exposure and seamless conversion.”
How it works is straightforward yet revolutionary: when Amazon doesn’t have a specific item in stock, the “Buy for Me” feature can show products from other sites and handle the entire transaction through Amazon’s platform. Amazon says the feature uses encryption to “securely” insert billing information on third-party sites, meaning Amazon can’t see what customers are ordering from outside its platform. This differs from similar tools from OpenAI and Google, which require users to manually enter payment information.
The feature runs on Amazon Bedrock and is powered by Amazon Nova and Anthropic’s Claude models to execute purchases on behalf of customers. Using sophisticated AI capabilities, Amazon securely provides the customer’s encrypted name, address, and payment details to complete the checkout process on the brand’s website.
The Larger Trend: AI Agents Transforming Digital Commerce
Amazon’s move is part of a broader industry shift toward AI agents that can navigate digital systems on behalf of users. In January 2025, OpenAI introduced Operator, a feature that uses the cursor to point and click, types on its own, browses the web and performs actions on various websites, such as booking restaurant reservations and assembling orders on platforms like Instacart and DoorDash.
This technology represents a new paradigm in how consumers might interact with digital services. According to Scott Friend from Bain Capital Ventures, Operator’s release signals an acceleration toward what will be viewed as “the third wave of major digital commerce innovation” where consumers “will be able to trust that AI agents will surf the digital ecosystem to get us exactly what we need, when we need it, at the best possible price.”
The Existential Threat to App-Based Companies
For many app-based businesses, these developments could pose an existential challenge. As highlighted in the notes, AI agents threaten to undercut the role that apps currently play in consumer interactions. When chatbots can autonomously order pizza, book flights, and manage routine shopping, the need for dedicated apps diminishes significantly.
Some companies are already taking notice. Before OpenAI launched Operator, they approached DoorDash to be an official “launch partner” for the new product. While the full details of DoorDash’s concerns aren’t publicly available, the food delivery company reportedly raised questions about the long-term implications of this technology.
The concern is understandable: when an agent orders food for you, you might never visit the DoorDash app itself. This eliminates opportunities for impulse purchases, upselling, and brand engagement that these platforms rely on to drive revenue growth. As noted in reporting from JPMorgan analysts, this could lead users to “spend less time on retail websites, which may negatively impact opportunities for new product discovery and cross-selling.”
Long-Term Implications for Retailers
For retailers and brands participating in this new ecosystem, the benefits and risks need careful assessment:
Benefits:
- Expanded customer reach through integration with AI shopping platforms
- Potential for increased conversion rates through frictionless purchasing
- Reduced need for investment in proprietary app development and maintenance
Risks:
- Reduced customer engagement with branded experiences
- Loss of cross-selling and upselling opportunities
- Decreased brand visibility when purchases occur via intermediary agents
- Potential dependency on large tech platforms that control these AI systems
According to ecommerce experts, brands need to optimize their digital presence for this new reality by “ensuring they rank first in branded search both on Bing and Google” to be found by AI agents, maintaining clear product information, and creating experiences that remain accessible to AI shopping agents.
The Technology Ecosystem Evolves
The rise of AI shopping agents is occurring within a broader evolutionary context of agentic AI. According to Digital Commerce 360, “Long term, OpenAI hopes to offer its Computer-Using Agent model to developers via an application programming interface (API). This would allow companies to build their own AI-powered agents for different tasks.”
This means we’re likely to see an explosion of specialized agents handling various aspects of digital commerce, from comparison shopping to warranty management to returns processing.
The competitive landscape is already taking shape. Companies including Google and Salesforce have launched their own agentic tools designed to handle tasks such as answering customers’ questions, scheduling appointments and filling out forms. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has also released an open-source AI agent called UI-TARS that performs similar functions.
Why It Matters for Business Leaders
This shift toward AI-mediated shopping has profound implications that extend beyond just retail:
- Customer Relationship Ownership: As AI agents intermediate more customer interactions, the entity that controls the agent may gain disproportionate influence over customer relationships. This could shift power further toward major tech platforms, as suggested by analysis from the World Economic Forum.
- Data Collection Changes: When customers no longer directly interact with apps, traditional data collection patterns will be disrupted. Companies may need new strategies to understand customer preferences.
- First-Party vs. Third-Party Dynamics: Businesses must decide whether to build their own agent capabilities or optimize for third-party agents that consumers already trust.
- Economics of Discovery: The “casual browsing” that drives much impulse purchasing may decrease, potentially altering revenue models for many retailers.
- New Security Considerations: Entrusting payment information to AI agents “may give some users serious pause,” as there are concerns about AI making mistakes or incorrect purchases due to hallucinations. There have already been documented cases of AI agents making purchasing errors.
For forward-thinking business leaders, now is the time to develop strategies for an economy where AI agents play an increasingly significant role in consumer purchasing decisions. The shift may take time to fully materialize, but signs of disruption are already visible, and companies that prepare early will be best positioned to thrive in this new landscape.
As with previous technological revolutions, the rise of AI agents won’t eliminate all existing business models, but it will fundamentally reshape competitive dynamics and customer engagement. The businesses that adapt fastest will find new opportunities in this transformed digital economy.
This entry was posted on May 12, 2025, 8:34 am and is filed under AI. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0.
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