Guide · Agentic commerce
Agentic commerce: your next customer is an AI agent.
Shopping assistants already compare, recommend and buy on people's behalf. They can only recommend well what they understand. Here is how to prepare a catalogue for them.
Definition
Agentic commerceA commerce model in which artificial intelligence agents search for, compare, recommend and, increasingly, buy products on behalf of a person or a business, querying the product data of retailers and manufacturers directly.
Why the catalogue decides who sells
A shopping agent doesn't see your website the way a person does: it reads data. If your product records have empty attributes, dimensions buried in free text, half-finished translations or wrong identifiers (GTIN/EAN), the agent cannot state that your product meets what the user asked for… and recommends another one.
What a shopping agent needs
- Structured, complete attributes: dimensions, materials, compatibility, certifications.
- Reliable identifiers: GTIN/EAN, manufacturer part number, brand.
- Content per language and market, not unreviewed machine translation.
- Access through standard protocols: MCP for live queries, ACP and UCP for the purchase process, and schema.org structured data on your website.
The role of the PIM in agentic commerce
The PIM is what guarantees that this data exists, is correct and is the same across every channel. An agentic PIM goes one step further: its own agents detect the gaps that would make a shopping agent discard your product, and close them before that happens.
Where to start
- Measure the completeness of your product records for an “AI agents” channel, treated like any other channel, with its own required attributes.
- Fix identifiers and units.
- Publish structured data on your website and expose the catalogue through an MCP server.
- Check what the assistants answer when you ask about your category.
Frequently asked questions
What is agentic commerce?
Shopping assisted or carried out by AI agents that query the product data of retailers and manufacturers directly.
Which protocols are used?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) so agents can query external systems, and purchase protocols such as ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) and UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), alongside schema.org structured data.
What does a PIM have to do with it?
Agents can only recommend well what they understand. The PIM ensures product data is complete, correct and consistent across every channel, agents included.
Try it with your own catalogue.
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