PRNewswire
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], February 26: After a year of rapid AI adoption and rising digital complexity, ecommerce growth in 2025 exposed a critical reality: increased budgets and more tools did not automatically translate into better outcomes. According to Netcore's Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026, the brands that pulled ahead were those that fixed execution, not those that spent more. The Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026 outlines six execution shifts ecommerce leaders are using to restore conversion and profitability in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.
The newly released report examines how leading ecommerce teams are re-architecting growth by shifting away from campaign-led, channel-first models toward agentic, always-on execution systems designed around profit outcomes.
Drawing on real-world performance patterns from large retailers and digital-first brands, the report identifies six execution shifts that are reshaping ecommerce growth heading into 2026. These shifts focus on how brands capture high-intent signals, orchestrate journeys in real time, and deploy AI agents with shared context and clear ownership.
"2025 didn't slow ecommerce; it exposed the limits of old growth models. Funnels multiplied, journeys expanded, and AI scaled, but conversion often didn't follow. The gap wasn't intelligence. It was execution," the report highlighted.
One of the report's central findings is the redefinition of discovery itself. Rather than treating discovery as a top-of-funnel activity, high-performing teams are increasingly managing it as a sales function, ensuring that intent signals translate into action through intelligent follow-up, not static campaigns.
The report also highlights a shift toward always-on journeys as the default operating model. Instead of episodic campaigns, ecommerce leaders are designing continuous, agent-driven journeys that adapt dynamically to customer behaviour, timing, and context.
Another key insight is the emergence of mission-led planning. Rather than starting with channels or formats, leading teams plan around missions such as clearing inventory, improving conversion quality, or increasing lifetime value, then select channels as execution layers.
Six E-commerce Trends That Will Define 2026
The Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026 identifies six structural shifts that explain why ecommerce performance is diverging sharply between leaders and laggards, including Walmart, Restaurant Equippers and Fabindia. Together, they point to a fundamental reset in how digital commerce systems are designed, governed, and measured.
1. Loss-making ecommerce is a systems problem, not a tools problem
The report finds that profitability does not improve by adding more AI features or copilots as seen in early experiments at Walmart. It improves when fragmented tools are collapsed into a small number of governed AI agents operating on shared data, with clear ownership tied to profit outcomes. Leaders who made this shift moved AI from experimentation to accountability.
2. Discovery, not checkout, is where ecommerce leaks the most
Contrary to conventional optimisation efforts, the report shows that most revenue loss happens before products are even found. Brands like Restaurant Equippers that turned search and discovery into a guided, conversational experience capable of understanding intent in under a minute saw measurable gains in add-to-cart and conversion without increasing media spend.
3. Fresh markdowns shifted from margin drain to profit lever
In categories with short shelf life, margin erosion was driven less by demand volatility and more by manual guesswork. Retailers such as Morrisons that replaced human-led markdown rounds with governed, store-level AI decision loops transformed pricing from a reactive process into a predictable, controllable profit engine.
4. Language moved from localisation to infrastructure
In growth markets, language emerged as a core operating layer rather than a surface-level translation. The report highlights how Meesho's vernacular and voice-first journeys across browsing, payments, and support unlocked higher conversion while reducing cost-to-serve especially among first-time and Tier II+ shoppers.
5. Shopping missions explained behaviour better than channels
Channel-based reporting masked the real drivers of loyalty and basket size. The report shows how organising strategy around shopping missions such as big shop, top-up, and need-it-now enabled retailers to tune assortment, pricing, and journeys more effectively, using channels as execution layers rather than planning anchors.
6. Always-on journeys quietly out-earned campaign calendars
While campaigns remained visible and measurable, the report finds that the highest incremental profit came from responding to live intent between campaigns. Brands like Fabindia, Crocs, Andamen and more that treated every browse, cart, and drop-off as recoverable value using AI-driven, triggered journeys outperformed calendar-led approaches without increasing messaging volume.
While AI adoption accelerated sharply in 2025, the report stresses that outcomes improve only when AI agents operate on shared context with clear ownership tied to profit metrics. Brands that treated agents as isolated tools saw limited gains; those that embedded them into execution workflows unlocked measurable results.
Across multiple use cases, teams applying these execution shifts reported outcomes such as faster revenue acceleration, stronger conversion lift, and improved ROI often without increasing media spend.
Unlike trend-heavy or speculative reports, The Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026 is grounded in execution patterns already in play. It reflects what ecommerce teams learned the hard way in 2025 and how those lessons are shaping operating models for the year ahead.
The report is intended for ecommerce CXOs, growth leaders, and digital teams seeking practical guidance on how to adapt to an environment where AI agents, not campaigns, increasingly drive outcomes.
Availability
The Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026 is now available to read online.
Access the report here: LINK
About Netcore Cloud
Netcore Cloud, a leading agentic marketing platform, leverages its comprehensive Customer Engagement Suite to create personalized, omnichannel experiences. Leveraging AI to analyze customer data, Netcore enables targeted segments and meaningful digital interactions. Trusted by over 6,500 brands across sectors like Ecommerce, Retail, Banking and Financial Services, Media and Entertainment, and Travel, its marquee clients include Walmart, Unilever, Tommy Hilfiger, Domino's, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Crocs. Netcore Cloud is appraised at Level 3 of ISACA's CMMI® by Equalitas Certifications Limited, reaffirming its commitment to process excellence. For more information, visit netcorecloud.com
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