Season 8, Episode 2: Will consumers adopt agentic commerce? (with Michael Morton)

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Michael Morton, a Senior Research Analyst at MoffettNathanson who covers E-Commerce and Marketplaces.

In our conversation, Michael and I discuss the potential for agentic commerce and why consumer adoption might be more limited than Silicon Valley expects. We explore the data surrounding consumer payment habits and the structural moats that protect incumbent marketplaces from disruption. Among other things, we discuss:

• Whether I'm wrong about Agentic commerce being a mirage
• Why denizens of Silicon Valley may be overestimating the average consumer's actual frequency of shopping decisions
• How Amazon's massive investment in physical fulfillment infrastructure creates a nearly insurmountable barrier for new agentic competitors
• Whether autonomous agents can provide a reliable shopping experience without real-time API integrations into merchant inventory systems
• If the shift toward AI-powered product discovery will ultimately benefit independent brands over centralized e-commerce marketplaces
• What role consumer trust and reviews play in preventing the widespread adoption of hands-off autonomous purchasing agents
• How the transition to AI search might lead to higher-value advertising clicks despite a potential decrease in volume
• When high-stakes purchases like family vacations will be deemed too important to delegate to an automated agent

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

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