AI is no longer a proactive investment to gain competitive advantage; it has become a fundamental requirement for survival. Like compound interest, companies that invest now will earn returns on their returns. Early adopters are hydrating their systems with data and insights that make them exponentially more intelligent with each customer interaction, while competitors deliberate on where to begin. The longer they wait, the more likely “evaluate all options” and “carefully iterate” become “miss the boat.”

The pace is staggering: 79% of enterprises have already adopted agentic AI in some form. But speed without discipline is its own risk. Only 11% of enterprises are successfully running these AI agents in full production, and Gartner projects 40% of AI projects will be canceled by 2027 due to costs, unclear value, and weak risk control. The gap between early adopters and laggards is widening as operational costs climb, market share erodes, and talent flees toward organizations working at the cutting edge. 

Organizations are in an AI pressure cooker. They will either emerge from this era perfectly executed or underdone, overcooked, and discarded by a market that has moved on without them.

Few industries feel this more acutely than retail. AI-driven traffic to retail sites grew 393% year over year in Q1 2026, faster than travel, financial services, or media. Yet retail still carries the lowest AI visit share of any industry. The pressure and the readiness gap are arriving simultaneously. 

Retailers in the US and EU are hemorrhaging $260B annually to checkout experience issues alone, with cart abandonment stubbornly hovering around 70% for two decades. Even as checkout processes have improved over that span, conversion hasn’t budged, suggesting the issue runs deeper than UX tweaks.  

What makes this moment different from prior cycles of retail AI investment is what's happening in the traffic data right now. A year ago, shoppers arriving via AI assistants converted at nearly half the rate of everyone else, indicating browsing behavior, not buying behavior. By early 2026, that had fully inverted. AI-referred visitors now convert 42% more than non-AI traffic and generate 37% higher revenue per visit, per Adobe’s Digital Insights from October 2024 – March 2026. The friction problem hasn't been fully solved, but the shape of who's showing up, and how ready they are to buy, has changed fundamentally.

On their own, LLMs lack real-time inventory access and the ability to leverage rich customer history and owned data. But retailers who harness AI to deliver immersive, guided, context-rich experiences will be best positioned to build lasting loyalty and unlock new growth. Merkle and Adobe have built a three-year partnership to do exactly that, turning these challenges into opportunities. That's where Experience Concierge for Retail comes in. 

Think about the best in-store shopping experience you've ever had. The kind that builds loyalty for life. An associate read the room, asked the right questions, surfaced options on the fly, and guided you toward something you didn't know you needed. You left with exactly the right product, and a level of trust that guaranteed you'd be back.

That experience has always been rare, expensive to scale, and confined to physical retail. Experience Concierge is the digital version of it: an AI-powered expert advisor that replicates that white-glove personal shopper experience wherever customers are. 

Three AI paradigms power it. Agentic AI orchestrates specialized agents to validate, curate, and guide customers across every phase of their journey. Generative UI creates an immersive experience that shows rather than tells. And conversational AI adapts its personality to the individual, not a segment, whether they're engaging through voice or text. 

A first-time parent building a nursery gets exploratory, expert-led guidance. A customer replacing a worn-out couch gets efficient, filtered options without the overwhelm. The concierge reads the moment and responds accordingly. 

Six specialized AI agents map to each phase of the customer journey: an Intent Validator that captures goals and budget up front; a Product Curator that filters noise in real time; a Solution Builder that previews compatibility; a Purchase Architect that assembles complete kits for checkout; an Execution Guide that delivers post-purchase tutorials; and a Lifecycle Navigator that surfaces history-driven upgrades and offers.

Critically, the solution doesn't ask retailers to start from scratch. Built on Adobe platforms (AEM, AEP, Adobe Target) and Azure Foundry with an agent-to-agent framework, it's designed to integrate with any existing stack and help retailers maximize the investments they've already made.

Retailers: Reduced shopping friction, improved conversion, larger basket sizes, and ROI on platform investments that may have been underutilized. 

Brands: Smarter discovery, retained identity, and distribution that isn't flattened by generic algorithms. 

Shoppers: Journeys that feel guided rather than transactional, recommendations that feel personal rather than random, and loyalty built on trust. 

Internal teams: Conversational AI insights traditional analytics can't capture, agentic workflows that reshape how teams act on data, and governance built in from the start.

AI is reshaping how customers shop. In an effort to keep up, we’re seeing many retailers chase the same features as everyone else. What moves the needle is thinking through how AI can improve what actually matters to the customer. 

Experience Concierge for Retail makes the best digital commerce experiences mirror the best human ones: intuitive, personal, and worth coming back to. That’s how agentic AI moves from a generic can’t-miss opportunity to a tool that fundamentally changes customer relationships.