Agents At The Gate: The threat to retailers

According to a recent Patchwork survey, only around a quarter of UK retailers say their technology is truly ready for AI-driven, autonomous shopping, leaving the majority structurally exposed as agentic commerce accelerates. Only 27% of retailers describe their tech stack as fully connected and scalable – the baseline to support AI agents that discover, compare and complete purchases on behalf of consumers. Yet nearly one in three still rely on fragmented systems and manual processes, and a further 29% call their integration “reactive and fragile”, meaning most businesses lack the data plumbing needed for always‑on, machine-mediated demand.

In the short term, some marketplaces and retailers will choose to block third‑party AI agents via measures such as restrictive robots.txt rules or API throttling, mirroring early moves by platforms like Amazon. Preferring to invest in their own agents.

This is because when discovery happens inside assistants rather than on-site, retailers risk losing direct visits, search traffic and owned audience relationships, weakening brand equity and advertising efficiency. Another reason to avoid AI agent platforms is to safeguard first‑party data: External agents can aggregate cross‑retailer behavioural data, creating powerful off-platform profiles that shift value – and bargaining power – away from merchants that invested to collect that data in the first place.

The strategic options are more nuanced that simply accessing or blocking Ai agents. Retailers will look for governed ways to benefit from agentic traffic without surrendering control. For example: curated, contract-based data feeds and APIs that specify what agents can access, at what frequency and on what commercial terms. Or retailer-owned or co-branded assistants that act as the “first interface”, keeping discovery and transaction within governed environments. And even Traffic verification, bot management and analytics to distinguish value-creating agents from opaque scrapers or arbitrage bots.

As AI agents increasingly mediate discovery and choice across categories, this is not a niche channel shift but a universal reset of how demand forms and flows in commerce – and leadership teams that treat it as “just another AI feature” risk finding their brands negotiated over, rather than chosen, by machines.