Jan 27, 2026 | 5 minute read
written by Bryan House
Quick summary: As AI reshapes how people discover products, commerce is re-centering on the merchant of record. Answer engines and AI agents may guide decisions, but they cannot fulfill promises, manage exceptions, or absorb risk when things go wrong. AI returns that responsibility to the merchant, which is a good thing for managing long-term customer relationships.
For a long time, commerce moved in a clear direction toward platforms that made it easier to buy anything, anywhere, with minimal friction. Marketplaces thrived because they solved logistics and offered convenience at a global level, and merchants willingly traded direct relationships for scale, reach, and efficiency.
That trade made sense. It still does in many cases, but it also created distance. Buyers stopped buying from someone and started buying through something. Over time, that abstraction changed how trust worked in commerce, especially when purchases carried emotional weight or real consequence. AI buying experiences are pressing on that weakness.
As discovery shifts from storefronts and category pages to answer engines and AI agents, the buying moment is becoming more intentional. People are no longer browsing. They are asking. And when someone asks an AI what to buy, they expect a recommendation that feels considered, not just convenient.
That expectation creates a new kind of pressure. Someone has to stand behind the answer.
Marketplaces remain extraordinary achievements. The speed, reliability, and global reach they enable would have been unthinkable not that long ago. But abundance has a cost. When every product sits next to thousands of near substitutes, the signal buyers need to feel confident starts to weaken. And we are all starting to see firsthand how the incentives of the marketplace are muscling out the power of brand in this setting, when most search results are “best choice” or “marketplace selects” from companies unfamiliar to you.
During moments like the holiday season, that weakness becomes obvious. The experience shifts from choosing the right thing to managing risk. Will an item arrive on time? Will it look cheap? Will returns be painful?
Those questions rarely map cleanly to ratings or reviews. They live in product context and require judgment.
Marketplaces are not built for that kind of nuance. They are built to optimize transactions at scale. As a result, the buying experience becomes more about efficiency than quality.
As platforms grew, the merchant gradually faded from view. The relationship between buyer and seller became indirect, mediated by algorithms and interfaces designed to abstract complexity away. If something went wrong, the buyer interacted with the platform. If something went right, there was often no memory of it the next time they returned to shop again.
Merchants accepted this loss of visibility because the upside was clear. Logistics, payments, customer service, and global reach were suddenly accessible without massive investment. But over time, the cost became apparent. Merchants lost ownership of the relationship. Buyers lost clarity about who they were actually buying from.
That abstraction works when you are reordering staples. It breaks down when purchases require trust — for example, with big-ticket items or in B2B commerce.
What is changing now is not just how people discover products, but how explicit their intent has become. Answer engines and AI shopping agents start with questions. Those questions carry context, constraints, and urgency.
According to OpenAI research, roughly two percent of ChatGPT queries are shopping-related, representing tens of millions of product-related questions every day. These interactions do not fit neatly into sponsored listings or infinite grids. They require interpretation, and they require someone downstream who can deliver on what was recommended.
AI systems do not want to run warehouses or manage returns. They do not want to handle customer service escalations when something arrives late or damaged. Their role is advisory. Execution still matters, and execution still carries risk.
That risk brings accountability back into focus.
Recent industry experiments have made this clear. When AI agents act on incomplete or inferred product data, mistakes happen quickly. Orders are placed for unavailable items. Pricing is misunderstood. Fulfillment expectations are missed. The issue here is the absence of a clear, authoritative merchant signal — made clear through AI-ready product data.
As discovery moves to answer engines, merchants get a second chance at relevance. But it is not a branding opportunity. It is an operational one. Confidence comes from clarity, and clarity starts with structured, AI-ready product data that reflects current inventory.
That information includes how products relate to one another, how pricing rules work, what fulfillment constraints exist, and what actually happens after the sale. Returns. Delays. Repeat purchases. All of this data exists, but it often lives in systems merchants do not fully connect.
In an answer-driven world, product data becomes the differentiator. Merchants who can connect product intelligence with customer outcomes learn faster. They improve recommendations. They reduce friction before it appears. Most importantly, they build trust that survives beyond a single transaction.
The foundation for all of this is ownership of data, fulfillment, and the customer relationship itself.
For years, commerce appeared to be centralizing on intermediaries like marketplaces. What is happening now feels different. As AI mediates discovery, someone still has to fulfill promises, handle exceptions, and learn from outcomes.
That means the merchant of record is becoming visible again — not because platforms are retreating, but because trust demands a clear owner. The merchants who succeed in this next phase will not do so by shouting louder or flooding more channels. They will succeed by being precise, accountable, and intentional with their data.
In an AI-mediated future, trust is not automated. It is earned by the merchant who stands behind the answer.
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