Anthropic is giving retailers the tools to build their own shopping and merchant agents in Claude. The AI shopping agents will be able to make recommendations, assemble baskets and support customers through to checkout.
This comes in the light of new findings from Adobe Analytics that AI-driven retail site visits now convert at a 60% higher rate than traffic from other sources. Giving retailers the ability to create their own shopping agents will help them capitalise on that opportunity – while also demonstrating how embedded AI is becoming in the retail customer journey.
Who owns the customer journey?
While this might seem like a slam-dunk for retailers, questions remain around who then owns the customer journey. Anthropic has stressed that the AI shopping agents will not be able to complete transactions on behalf of customers or merchants, helping ensure control remains with the retailer. However, customer conversations with AI agents could provide valuable insight into shopping intent and product preferences, meaning retailers using Anthropic’s shopping agents could miss out on vital data about customer behaviour and intent.
Chris Jones, managing director at PSE Consulting, cautions that customers may also have concerns about taking retail advice from ‘biased’ AI agents.
“Recent PSE Consulting research across 4,250 consumers in the UK, US, France and Germany found that 74% prefer an independent AI assistant for shopping, while only 10% want AI embedded within a single retail or delivery platform,” he said. “Consumers want an agnostic agent at the top of the funnel, helping them search, compare and build a shortlist, before moving to a merchant or marketplace they trust to complete the purchase.”
A place for independent agents
He added that this doesn’t mean there is no place for AI shopping agents. “I can see a world where independent and on-platform agents coexist,” he said. While enterprise-level retailers and marketplaces have the scale and resources to invest in AI-assisted shopping journeys in which they own every stage from discovery to purchase, this is more challenging for smaller retailers.
“Building a sophisticated proprietary agent requires data, technology and investment that many smaller businesses will struggle to match,” Jones said.
There is also a strategic consideration for retailers adopting third-party AI infrastructure. Merchant-built agents may strengthen customer engagement, but they leave retailers dependent on external AI providers for the underlying technology, pricing and future product direction. This is another reason why independent agents could become just as important to merchant visibility as retailer-owned agents are to conversion – which Jones describes as a win-win.
“Consumers stand to gain greater choice and more useful assistance across the shopping journey,” he said. “Merchants gain new ways to convert and retain customers, but they will need to compete both for inclusion in independent AI shortlists and for engagement once a shopper reaches their own platform.”
Regardless of take-up, Anthropic’s announcement clearly demonstrates that the debate is shifting from whether AI will influence ecommerce to who controls that influence. For retailers, success may depend as much on data, trust and visibility as the technology itself.
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