Although agentic commerce is building consumer confidence and helping UK shoppers find and consider more products online, retail fulfilment is struggling to meet the promises made at checkout, according to new research from AI-native logistics technology company Locus.
Locus surveyed 2,000 UK shoppers and found that while agentic shopping is growing – with 43% of shoppers using AI to research or choose products alongside search engines or retailer websites and 37% saying AI makes them more likely to try brands or products they had not previously considered – only 7% say that fast delivery promises are consistently met.
With broader research suggesting that 85% of customers hesitate to do business with a company again after just one poor delivery experience, fulfilment is shifting from an operational necessity to a key loyalty driver.
Agentic fulfilment is the answer, says Locus
Locus holds the view that agentic fulfilment is needed to deliver on the promises made by agentic commerce. Highlighting that capacity changes throughout the day – at pace in the new agentic commerce landscape – Pradyumna Chowdhary, CPO at Locus, pointed to the need for flexible and agile fulfilment operations. “Fulfilment technology needs to keep assessing the order and make adjustments while there is still time to keep the delivery on track,” he said. “That gives the operation a current view of what it can handle and allows it to respond before a change in the network becomes a missed promise for the customer.
He added: “That reliability will matter even more as AI introduces shoppers to retailers they have never used before. The delivery is the customer’s first direct experience of how the business performs. Agentic commerce will only work at scale when the delivery operation has the intelligence to keep acting after the purchase and carry that first order through successfully.”
Rising customer expectations
As agentic commerce continues to accelerate, customer expectations are rising with it. Loyalty is hard-won and easily lost – and the findings from Locus indicate that retailers whose fulfilment operations don’t live up to the promises made at checkout may find themselves losing out.
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