Four ways Canada’s grocers must lay the groundwork for agentic commerce

Like all AI success, agentic commerce outcomes will only be as good as the data.

In brief

To capture agentic commerce value, grocers must unify siloed data, own the customer journey and embed trust to drive personalization and growth.

Agentic commerce has massive potential for Canada's grocery segment. This is one of those areas where two things can be true at once. Potential use cases and benefits abound. And seizing those opportunities requires grocers to get sound data foundations in place now.

Get your data ready

With agentic commerce, Canadian grocers and other retailers can enable mass personalization and selection, as well as enhanced competition across markets and vendors. Agentic commerce will also allow brands to evolve unified commerce through entirely new customer engagement strategies that simply weren’t possible in the past.

Prepare the business for that possibility by reconciling store and online data through unified systems. Create overarching data ownership, dismantling siloes and implementing systems that allow people clear and easy access. Think about the information you already have within various programs and platforms and centralize its storage to create a single source of truth for the organization.

Empower leaders with tools and resources needed to get a comprehensive view of customer trends and other insights to support strategies and, ultimately, deploy agentic commerce.

Own the customer journey

To make the most of agentic commerce — or any other advanced technology — clarify and establish ownership of the customer journey. That means shifting ownership out of the hands of a single department like marketing or IT and creating a more strategic ownership team capable of working together. This derisks the process so teams don’t inadvertently develop ideas and experiences in isolation from, let’s say, the IT team that will ultimately bring the technology to life or the cybersecurity group responsible for safeguarding the personal information on that platform. This helps stakeholders across a grocery retailer understand the big picture and develop an agentic commerce plan that makes sense in real life.

Identify your biggest data opportunities

Layering agentic commerce into your plans shouldn’t mean doing everything at once. Start by pinpointing the use cases that could be most beneficial to your organization’s unique circumstances. For example, in recent years, retail media networks (RMNs) have become a vital component of brand marketing in the grocery space.

With access to shoppers’ rich, first-party data and sophisticated targeting, personalization and measurement capabilities, RMNs can help grocers collaborate with suppliers to improve marketing and sales. If that sounds like something you’re already doing, RMNs may offer an additional data source that can feed agentic commerce activities. Assess what those channels look like for your business and focus efforts accordingly.

Address trust and responsible AI by design

Deploying agentic and other technologies at scale means using large amounts of data in ways that may feel new for grocers. For consumers to be comfortable participating in these digital experiences, they must trust that the organization knows what it’s doing with new technologies and is approaching the process responsibly and transparently. Put customers at the centre by assessing and strengthening your privacy and cybersecurity governance with responsible AI in mind before you take the leap into any additional tech opportunities. 

Summary

Agentic commerce presents a major opportunity for Canada’s grocers, but success depends on strong data foundations. Organizations must break down siloes, unify systems and establish clear ownership of the customer journey to enable collaboration across teams. By focusing on high-value use cases and activating first-party data, grocers can unlock meaningful growth. At the same time, embedding trust through responsible AI, privacy and cybersecurity will be critical to gaining consumer confidence and scaling these capabilities effectively.