Download the app. Join the loyalty program. Shop directly. Identify yourself every time you transact.

But as more shopping takes place on marketplaces and quick commerce platforms, retailers face a dilemma: what happens to loyalty when the customer chooses to shop through a channel the retailer doesn’t own?

Increasingly, the answer seems to be: loyalty needs to follow the shopper.

And as AI agents begin shopping on our behalf, that could become even more important.

Dan Murphy’s brings loyalty into rapid delivery

Petbarn was the first retailer to integrate its loyalty program with Uber Eats in Australia in 2025, allowing Friends for Life members to access Petbarn member pricing through the platform.

Dan Murphy’s has since become another early mover, and is an interesting example because loyalty is already deeply embedded in the retailer’s proposition. My Dan’s has more than 5 million members and an 83% scan rate.

In late 2025, Dan Murphy’s extended My Dan’s into Uber Eats, becoming the platform’s second retailer loyalty integration in Australia and its first liquor loyalty integration globally. Members could link their account and access member pricing, with more than 200 member-exclusive offers available at launch.

It was a logical move for a key retailer in the category.

Many alcohol purchases are occasion and time driven. You’re having friends over, you’ve run out of something, or plans change. In those moments, rapid delivery becomes a natural extension of the Dan Murphy’s proposition.

But with an 83% loyalty scan rate, moving a transaction onto a third-party platform potentially turns a highly identifiable and engaged customer into a less connected one. Linking My Dan’s provides a bridge between the convenience of the marketplace and the customer relationship Dan Murphy’s has built.

It also means customers don’t have to choose between speed and member value. They can access the convenience of rapid delivery while retaining one of the core benefits they associate with shopping at Dan Murphy’s.

Costco is doing something similar with DoorDash. Shoppers don’t need to be Costco members to order Costco products through DoorDash, but Costco members can link their membership to access lower member pricing within the platform.

These retailers aren’t simply using quick commerce platforms as another fulfilment channel. They are allowing a core part of their membership proposition and experience to travel with the customer into a third-party ecosystem.

UK grocers are pushing the model further

Sainsbury’s is increasingly connecting its Nectar loyalty ecosystem with Uber.

In April, Nectar introduced the ability for members to convert Nectar points into Uber vouchers that can be used across Uber and Uber Eats.

Then in July, customers gained the ability to link their Nectar account and earn points on eligible Sainsbury’s purchases through Uber Eats.

That starts to look less like a delivery partnership and more like an interconnected omni-channel ecosystem.

And Tesco is following a similar path, announcing in July that it would launch on Uber Eats in August, followed by Deliveroo later this year. Shoppers using the platforms will be able to access a range of Clubcard Prices and earn Clubcard points.

That means Tesco is taking one of its most important customer propositions and making it available to customers via quick commerce marketplaces as well.

The loyalty walled garden is starting to open

For retailers, integrating loyalty is a significant step.

Owned eCommerce has traditionally given retailers a rich, known view of who is shopping and how their behaviour changes over time. Third-party marketplaces disrupt that. Revenue still lands with the retailer, but the customer experience and much of the behavioural data sit with the platform instead.

Loyalty integration bridges that gap. When a shopper identifies through their loyalty membership on a third-party platform, the retailer can reconnect that activity to a known customer, and shoppers no longer have to trade away member pricing and points for the convenience of quick commerce.

But there’s a trade-off

Integrating loyalty into Uber Eats, DoorDash or Deliveroo is not without tension.

Retailers have spent years building direct relationships through apps, websites and loyalty programs. Extending those benefits to third-party platforms risks shifting habitual behaviour from the retailer to the marketplace and adds a further cost line to baskets that already carry delivery fees and platform commission.

But the alternative may be worse. Withholding loyalty benefits keeps customers less connected to the brand and misses a chance to reach younger shoppers that quick commerce attracts more readily than retailers’ own apps and stores.

Tesco’s approach is telling. By extending Clubcard into both Uber Eats and Deliveroo, the strategy seems less about dictating where customers shop and more about remaining relevant wherever they choose to shop.

And then comes agentic commerce

This gets even more interesting when the person choosing the channel is no longer the shopper... or the shopper choosing the channel is no longer a person.

Imagine asking an AI assistant: “Restock the household essentials we normally buy, get them delivered tonight and keep the total under $100.”

The agent may need to choose between the retailer’s website, Uber Eats, DoorDash or another marketplace based on price, availability, delivery time and convenience.

But there is another input it will increasingly understand: loyalty.

If I’m a Costco member, the agent needs to know that linking my membership may unlock a lower price on DoorDash.

If I’m a My Dan’s member, it should recognise the member pricing and offers available when deciding where to purchase.

If I have Clubcard, it should understand the Clubcard Prices available to me.

If I have accumulated loyalty points or rewards, eventually I may expect my agent to understand their value and decide whether they should be used.

And suddenly loyalty interoperability becomes much more than a convenience feature.

It becomes part of the core criteria an AI agent uses to decide who to transact with on the shopper’s behalf.

Loyalty is becoming the brand anchor

We have traditionally thought about loyalty programs as something tied to a single channel: customers enter a retailer’s ecosystem, deepen their relationship through loyalty and receive benefits for their continued custom.

But commerce is becoming increasingly distributed. A customer might discover a product through social, purchase through Uber Eats, replenish through a retailer app and eventually ask an AI assistant to shop for them.

The retailer will not necessarily own every interface. What it can own and is distinctly theirs is the anchor that keeps the customer connected back to them, wherever they transact. Loyalty becomes that anchor, connecting the experience, affording member pricing and delivering value across channels, and enabling the retailer to keep the distributed shopper engaged over time.

For retailers and brands, there are a few implications:

• Loyalty needs to become more portable. Customers shouldn’t have to sacrifice benefits because they choose a marketplace or quick commerce channel.

• Customer identification becomes even more valuable. Loyalty can help connect transactions occurring on third-party platforms back to known customers.

• Partnership strategy becomes part of loyalty strategy. Retailers need to decide where their loyalty proposition travels and which benefits remain exclusive.

• Agent readiness will eventually matter. Loyalty credentials, member pricing and rewards will need to be discoverable and usable as machines increasingly make purchasing decisions.

Petbarn, Dan Murphy’s, Costco, Sainsbury’s and Tesco are early examples of what that future could look like.

The next era of commerce may be less about pulling customers back to an owned destination, and more about securing the sale in the environments we don’t control – with loyalty playing a vital role in enabling that.

💬 So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

🤖 Want to show up in AI? Reddit says think beyond your own website. As brands scramble to understand how to improve their visibility in AI search, Reddit is making the case that the answer increasingly lies beyond owned channels. The platform’s APAC VP Rob Gaige says brands should focus on five areas: understanding the questions consumers are asking, building authority around topics rather than keywords, participating in credible third-party conversations, structuring content so AI can interpret it, and measuring how brands appear across AI platforms. The emphasis on third-party authority is particularly important. Reddit has become one of the most frequently cited sources by AI tools, while LinkedIn is similarly betting that trusted, human-generated content will become more valuable as the web fills with AI-generated material. Optimising your own website and product content is only part of the AI visibility equation. Brands also need to think about the broader ecosystem of credible content, conversations and validation signals that AI uses to decide who and what to recommend.

🔎 AI search is creating a much narrower digital shelf. New research from Productrise suggests Google’s AI Mode could dramatically narrow the products shoppers see. Analysing more than 2 million product listings, it found traditional Google search surfaced products for 88% of product-related queries, compared with just 23% in AI Mode. When products did appear, AI Mode showed an average of 4.3 versus 22.5 in traditional search. Even more interestingly, just 0.8% of products appearing in traditional search also appeared in AI Mode for the same query on the same day. While the study covers the US and UK, the implication for brands is significant: AI isn’t simply changing how shoppers search, it’s creating a much smaller - and different - consideration set. Being discoverable increasingly means making the AI-powered shortlist.

🗺️ Google Maps is moving from discovery to action. Google has expanded ‘Ask Maps’, its Gemini-powered conversational experience. Users can now describe what they’re craving and have Maps find restaurants and start a food order, search for hotels based on detailed preferences, discover nearby events and receive recommendations based on existing travel plans and reservations. The food ordering capability is particularly interesting: rather than searching, comparing options and then navigating elsewhere, shoppers can increasingly express an intent and let AI do more of the work. It’s another example of the shift from traditional search towards conversational and intent-led discovery, with the platforms we already use becoming increasingly capable of taking action on our behalf.

🔎 Need something overnight? Amazon delivers. Amazon has launched faster Prime Free Same-Day delivery windows in Sydney and Melbourne, giving Prime members morning, afternoon and evening delivery slots on eligible orders over $49. Order before 10pm and get it at your door between 4am and 8am, order before 8am for delivery between 2pm and 6pm, or order by noon for delivery between 5pm and 10pm. One million products are now eligible in Sydney, with over half a million in Melbourne, spanning everyday essentials, small appliances, electronics, home and kitchen, beauty, books, toys and clothing. Amazon has also launched Amazon Day nationally, letting Prime members nominate a single day of the week to receive all their orders together rather than in multiple shipments. For brands and retailers, this is another signal that delivery speed and flexibility are becoming baseline expectations rather than differentiators, and it raises the bar on what “fast” now means in the Australian market.

🦊 So who am I?

I’m an advisor, trainer and thought leader with 25+ years’ experience across digital, marketing, loyalty and commerce, working with consumer, FMCG and retail brands. I’m also the host of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition and have been recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert (2026), and Top 20 CMO (2018).

Before you go…

🧭 Need strategic clarity or expert advice? Let’s chat.

🛠️ Looking to build capability in your team? Explore training & workshops.

🎤 Planning an event or offsite? Book a keynote or thought leadership session.

Get in touch at teresa@arkticfox.io or find out more here, and don’t forget to follow along on LinkedIn and Substack.

Pressure is changing both mindset and behaviour

The 2026 IAB Commerce and Discovery Report shows Australian consumers are cutting back, cancelling, or delaying spending across many discretionary categories, from eating out and petrol to major household purchases such as televisions. This has been a sustained pattern rather than a short-term reaction.

But spending less is only part of the story. Cost-of-living pressure isn’t just changing what people buy, it’s changing how they buy. As budgets tighten, shoppers are investing more time researching, comparing and validating purchases before they commit.

Seventy-one per cent of shoppers say they’ve changed their retail choices because of rising costs, whilst 69% now rely on online research to feel confident buying at all. Effort has replaced ease as the price of confidence.

Loyalty becomes a second currency

Cutting back isn’t, however, the only lever shoppers are pulling. Rewards points and loyalty benefits have become a cost-of-living essential, with 89% of Australians belonging to a rewards program and 55% increasing their use of points and rewards in the past six months, according to recent CommBank data from May 2026. Loyalty has effectively become a second currency, and it’s the first adaptation shoppers make before cutting spend outright. Before many shoppers change what they buy, they’re squeezing more value out of relationships they already have with retailers and brands.

The real shift: the trade-off itself is disappearing

A bigger change, however, is underway, as agentic commerce will flip the model on its head. Shoppers have always faced a genuine trade-off: shop around and spend the time or accept the convenience of not bothering and likely pay more or extract less value. That trade-off saw shoppers weighing up when to go the extra mile based on the potential upside from the process.

AI is collapsing that effort-versus-value trade-off entirely. This isn’t about AI replacing a single shopping task. It’s that the cost of seeking value has structurally dropped, so shoppers can now capture the upside of shopping around and get their time back, across far more shopping journeys than before, not just the big purchases. Seventy-nine per cent of Australians now want AI tools to help with their online shopping in some way. A third want help finding the retailer with the best price, and close to a quarter wanting alerts when a product is cheaper elsewhere. This appetite spans everyday purchases, not just major annual purchases, and agentic commerce will increasingly enable it – and we are already seeing the first iteration of that.

This isn’t simply the next generation of comparison shopping. Consumers have long had access to Google Shopping, ShopBack , PriceSpy and other comparison tools, but the burden of using them still sat with the shopper. Agentic commerce shifts that burden to the machine.

What this looks like in practice

Google ‘s Universal Cart is one of the clearest signals of this shift underway. It tracks prices over time, so shoppers can buy when a product hits its lowest point, and it alerts them to price drops without any manual monitoring. It also layers in loyalty program rewards and payment methods to maximise value from existing retailer relationships, and automatically applies promos and discounts at checkout. Each of those used to be a separate task a shopper managed themselves, now it can happen for them. Microsoft Copilot checkout offers some comparable features, unlocking member-only pricing for shoppers while tracking price changes in the background. These are examples of the shift, not the shift itself, and more will follow as agentic commerce matures.

However, not all categories will feel the change equally. Categories with low product differentiation and frequent repurchase including groceries, electronics, household cleaning products, vitamins and other consumables are the most exposed, because an agent can compare like-for-like almost instantly and act on it. Categories built on subjective or experiential value, fashion, beauty, hospitality, have more insulation for now, because “best value” is harder for an agent to define on the shopper’s behalf and brand preference often influences the purchase in a bigger way. That won’t hold forever. As these tools become more intuitive, they’ll be able to weigh up where an individual is willing to trade down and where quality at the right price point matters more, therefore selecting the best value for each person’s preferences.

What it means for brands and retailers

For brands and retailers, this changes what “competing on value and price” requires. The rulebook has changed.

• Loyalty needs to work on three levels: It needs to be machine-accessible, so agents can recognise a shopper’s membership and benefits; machine-interpretable, so they can assess the value of those benefits against competing offers; and customer-compelling, so the proposition remains worth joining and staying loyal to.

• Price alone stops being a differentiator. Price alone stops being a differentiator. When agents can find and apply the best price instantly, competing purely on price is the fastest way to the bottom. Differentiation becomes even more vital through service, experience, unique solutions, value and trust. So do the cues that support an agent’s decision-making: reviews, inventory availability, returns policies and more as these are part of the whole value equation. At the same time, retailers in highly commoditised industries with lower levels of differentiation are also likely to continue expanding private label to stand apart, win on best value and a gain leg up through unique range that can’t be found anywhere else. Winning the machine may become just as important as winning the shopper.

• Brand trust risks becoming agent trust. The relationship shifts from “I’m loyal to this retailer or brand” to “I trust my agent to find me the best deal or extract the optimal value based on my needs.” Brands that don’t show up well inside that agent relationship risk losing the customer relationship entirely, even if the customer never notices it happening.

• Early movers win the new shelf. Retailers and brands structuring their product data, loyalty member data and propositions, bolstering online reputation, and enhancing pricing strategies to be agent-ready now will have a real head start, and the ones who move early will be the ones agents trust, recommend, and ultimately purchase from on the shopper’s behalf.

The bottom line

Value and price have never mattered more, and more shoppers than ever are chasing both which is now made dramatically easier by agentic commerce. What’s changing isn’t the intensity of that pursuit, it’s the boundaries of how brands and retailers compete for it.

💬 So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

💬 WhatsApp is becoming retail’s newest storefront. New research from Infobip and Retail Economics suggests retailers are rapidly shifting from one-way marketing to conversational commerce, with WhatsApp emerging as one of the most effective customer engagement channels. With open rates of 85–95% compared to around 33% for traditional eCommerce email, retailers are increasingly using the platform to answer questions, recommend products, provide order updates and support purchases within a single conversation. Layer conversational AI on top, and WhatsApp begins to function like a digital sales associate that’s available 24/7. While much of the AI conversation has focused on search engines and chatbots, messaging platforms are quietly becoming another important commerce channel. For brands and retailers, the opportunity isn’t simply to automate customer service, but to create persistent, personalised conversations that support discovery, purchase and loyalty in the same place consumers are already spending their time.

🛍️ TikTok Shop is borrowing Amazon Prime’s playbook. TikTok is reportedly testing a paid membership program, TikTok Shop Plus, offering benefits including free shipping, exclusive discounts and member-only offers as it looks to deepen loyalty and keep shoppers from completing purchases elsewhere. The move reflects a broader shift in social commerce: platforms are no longer competing solely on discovery and entertainment; they’re investing in deeper customer relationships that encourage shoppers to stay within their ecosystem. Membership programs increase purchase frequency, reduce shopper churn and create stronger reasons to return. For brands, this signals the continued maturation of social commerce. As platforms become destinations rather than just acquisition channels, decisions around assortment, exclusive launches, loyalty benefits and investment will become increasingly important as TikTok competes not just for attention, but for a greater share of retail spend.

🛒 Marketplaces are cementing their place in Australia’s retail infrastructure. A recent report by Inside Retail Australia revealed that Australian consumers spent $18.9 billion on online marketplaces in 2025, making them the fastest-growing online retail category, while marketplace apps are now used by 69% of online shoppers - almost on par with retailer websites. More importantly, the report argues marketplaces are no longer an experimental sales channel or a way to clear excess stock. They have become the starting point for product discovery, price comparison and purchase decisions. As AI increasingly influences how consumers shop, that importance is only set to grow, with clean product data and marketplace optimisation becoming critical for visibility. For brands and retailers, the question is no longer whether marketplaces should be part of the channel mix, but how to build the operational capabilities, product content and data foundations needed to compete effectively across them.

🗣️ Meta wants to turn social discovery into conversational commerce

If you’re a brand advertising on social, you’ll already know Meta’s commerce engine well: interrupt the scroll, earn attention through creative, and convert that interest into a product visit or purchase.

Muse Spark begins to rewrite that model. I’ve been a bit late to the party to write about Muse as Google ’s Universal Cart stole the show, but it is no less newsworthy.

Launched in April, Muse Spark is the first model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs and now powers the rebuilt Meta AI experience. It is multimodal, meaning it can interpret images as well as text, use tools and deploy multiple agents to work on different parts of a request simultaneously.

Whilst it performs a bunch of functions, it is the shopping experience that is most interesting to us at Arktic Fox . Shopping Mode, which was showcased at Cannes in June, pulls content from Instagram, Facebook and Threads and will leverage it to power its shopping experience.

Social today tops the list of tools used by Australians to discover – as seen in the recent IAB commerce and discovery report.

Social media is the top source used for discovery

With so much of discovery and inspiration occurring within social platforms today, it is a natural progression and one that seeks to provide a new and distinct commerce strategy for Meta – which has trailed TikTok in building a compelling commerce offering and one that will potentially extend Meta well beyond pay-to-play commerce advertising that has been at the core of their strategy. The distinction matters because a brand could perform strongly in Meta advertising and still be poorly represented in Meta’s new commerce experience.

The quick take: traditional Meta commerce vs Meta AI commerce

Meta’s biggest advantage is not the chatbot

ChatGPT and Google can already recommend products conversationally. Meta’s advantage is the enormous layer of social context, trust signals and UGC sitting underneath the conversation.

Shopping Mode draws on brand storytelling, product catalogue content, creator content and user interaction behaviour within their vast ecosystem to enable the social giant to re-invest shopping through AI. You can also be selective about what Meta AI draws on as source information, so it surfaces the brands or creators you trust most.

This gives Meta something traditional search engines and retailer assistants do not possess at the same scale on two fronts:

1. A view of what people watch, save, follow, share and ultimately trust.

2. A much deeper level of unstructured and structured product data to draw upon.

This is where creator content and strategy play a much more important commercial role. It is no longer valuable only because it generates reach, engagement or clicks. It also gives Meta’s AI more context about where a product fits, how it is used and which customers may find it relevant and will drive discoverability within Meta’s new shopping experience.

Finally, its newer shopping features can also combine products from Facebook Marketplace with options from across the web, then refine them by factors such as price, style or distance.

Product imagery key in the content equation

As many of Meta’s platforms are video and image-driven content, interpreting that content via AI is key to Muse Spark. It can analyse a photograph, understand what is in it and use that visual information to support a recommendation. Meta gives the example of scanning a product and asking how it compares with alternatives.

For brands, this elevates imagery beyond something designed to make a product page look appealing.

Clean hero shots help the AI identify the product. Multiple angles reveal its form and features. Lifestyle imagery provides context around style, scale and use. Creator videos show how the product behaves in the real world.

The stronger the alignment between the image and the structured product information behind it, the easier it becomes for an AI system to understand when that product belongs in an answer.

What this means for brands

• The first priority is product data. Titles, descriptions, attributes, pricing and inventory need to be complete, accurate and consistently synchronised. A conversational assistant cannot confidently recommend a product it does not properly understand.

• The second is visual and creator content. Brands should think beyond campaign assets and build a broader library to tell their product and brand stories, showing products from multiple angles, in realistic contexts and against specific customer needs.

• The third is measurement. As more discovery happens inside AI-generated answers, conventional metrics such as clicks and site sessions will provide an incomplete view. Brands will increasingly need to understand where products are being surfaced, what questions customers are asking and whether conversational discovery ultimately drives purchase.

Muse Spark is not replacing Meta advertising. It is adding another layer to Meta commerce - one where the opportunity to win begins before an ad is served.

The feed asked brands to capture attention. Muse Spark will ask them to earn the recommendation.

🦊 So who am I?

I’m an advisor, trainer and thought leader with 25+ years’ experience across digital, marketing, loyalty and commerce, working with consumer, FMCG and retail brands. I’m also the host of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition and have been recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert (2026), and Top 20 CMO (2018).

Before you go…

🧭 Need strategic clarity or expert advice? Let’s chat.

🛠️ Looking to build capability in your team? Value and price have always mattered to shoppers, but the cost-of-living crisis has pushed both to the front of every retail and brand strategy. What’s less talked about is how AI is about to change the mechanics of finding value altogether. For decades, finding the best deal has required effort. Agentic commerce removes much of that effort, fundamentally changing how shoppers discover value and how brands compete for it. Never before has finding the best price, the best deal, or the best-value solution been this easy.

Pressure is changing both mindset and behaviour

The 2026 IAB Commerce and Discovery Report shows Australian consumers are cutting back, cancelling, or delaying spending across many discretionary categories, from eating out and petrol to major household purchases such as televisions. This has been a sustained pattern rather than a short-term reaction.

But spending less is only part of the story. Cost-of-living pressure isn’t just changing what people buy, it’s changing how they buy. As budgets tighten, shoppers are investing more time researching, comparing and validating purchases before they commit.

Seventy-one per cent of shoppers say they’ve changed their retail choices because of rising costs, whilst 69% now rely on online research to feel confident buying at all. Effort has replaced ease as the price of confidence.

Loyalty becomes a second currency

Cutting back isn’t, however, the only lever shoppers are pulling. Rewards points and loyalty benefits have become a cost-of-living essential, with 89% of Australians belonging to a rewards program and 55% increasing their use of points and rewards in the past six months, according to recent CommBank data from May 2026. Loyalty has effectively become a second currency, and it’s the first adaptation shoppers make before cutting spend outright. Before many shoppers change what they buy, they’re squeezing more value out of relationships they already have with retailers and brands.

The real shift: the trade-off itself is disappearing

A bigger change, however, is underway, as agentic commerce will flip the model on its head. Shoppers have always faced a genuine trade-off: shop around and spend the time or accept the convenience of not bothering and likely pay more or extract less value. That trade-off saw shoppers weighing up when to go the extra mile based on the potential upside from the process.

AI is collapsing that effort-versus-value trade-off entirely. This isn’t about AI replacing a single shopping task. It’s that the cost of seeking value has structurally dropped, so shoppers can now capture the upside of shopping around and get their time back, across far more shopping journeys than before, not just the big purchases. Seventy-nine per cent of Australians now want AI tools to help with their online shopping in some way. A third want help finding the retailer with the best price, and close to a quarter wanting alerts when a product is cheaper elsewhere. This appetite spans everyday purchases, not just major annual purchases, and agentic commerce will increasingly enable it – and we are already seeing the first iteration of that.

This isn’t simply the next generation of comparison shopping. Consumers have long had access to Google Shopping, ShopBack , PriceSpy and other comparison tools, but the burden of using them still sat with the shopper. Agentic commerce shifts that burden to the machine.

What this looks like in practice

Google ‘s Universal Cart is one of the clearest signals of this shift underway. It tracks prices over time, so shoppers can buy when a product hits its lowest point, and it alerts them to price drops without any manual monitoring. It also layers in loyalty program rewards and payment methods to maximise value from existing retailer relationships, and automatically applies promos and discounts at checkout. Each of those used to be a separate task a shopper managed themselves, now it can happen for them. Microsoft Copilot checkout offers some comparable features, unlocking member-only pricing for shoppers while tracking price changes in the background. These are examples of the shift, not the shift itself, and more will follow as agentic commerce matures.

However, not all categories will feel the change equally. Categories with low product differentiation and frequent repurchase including groceries, electronics, household cleaning products, vitamins and other consumables are the most exposed, because an agent can compare like-for-like almost instantly and act on it. Categories built on subjective or experiential value, fashion, beauty, hospitality, have more insulation for now, because “best value” is harder for an agent to define on the shopper’s behalf and brand preference often influences the purchase in a bigger way. That won’t hold forever. As these tools become more intuitive, they’ll be able to weigh up where an individual is willing to trade down and where quality at the right price point matters more, therefore selecting the best value for each person’s preferences.

What it means for brands and retailers

For brands and retailers, this changes what “competing on value and price” requires. The rulebook has changed.

• Loyalty needs to work on three levels: It needs to be machine-accessible, so agents can recognise a shopper’s membership and benefits; machine-interpretable, so they can assess the value of those benefits against competing offers; and customer-compelling, so the proposition remains worth joining and staying loyal to.

• Price alone stops being a differentiator. Price alone stops being a differentiator. When agents can find and apply the best price instantly, competing purely on price is the fastest way to the bottom. Differentiation becomes even more vital through service, experience, unique solutions, value and trust. So do the cues that support an agent’s decision-making: reviews, inventory availability, returns policies and more as these are part of the whole value equation. At the same time, retailers in highly commoditised industries with lower levels of differentiation are also likely to continue expanding private label to stand apart, win on best value and a gain leg up through unique range that can’t be found anywhere else. Winning the machine may become just as important as winning the shopper.

• Brand trust risks becoming agent trust. The relationship shifts from “I’m loyal to this retailer or brand” to “I trust my agent to find me the best deal or extract the optimal value based on my needs.” Brands that don’t show up well inside that agent relationship risk losing the customer relationship entirely, even if the customer never notices it happening.

• Early movers win the new shelf. Retailers and brands structuring their product data, loyalty member data and propositions, bolstering online reputation, and enhancing pricing strategies to be agent-ready now will have a real head start, and the ones who move early will be the ones agents trust, recommend, and ultimately purchase from on the shopper’s behalf.

The bottom line

Value and price have never mattered more, and more shoppers than ever are chasing both which is now made dramatically easier by agentic commerce. What’s changing isn’t the intensity of that pursuit, it’s the boundaries of how brands and retailers compete for it.

💬 So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

💬 WhatsApp is becoming retail’s newest storefront. New research from Infobip and Retail Economics suggests retailers are rapidly shifting from one-way marketing to conversational commerce, with WhatsApp emerging as one of the most effective customer engagement channels. With open rates of 85–95% compared to around 33% for traditional eCommerce email, retailers are increasingly using the platform to answer questions, recommend products, provide order updates and support purchases within a single conversation. Layer conversational AI on top, and WhatsApp begins to function like a digital sales associate that’s available 24/7. While much of the AI conversation has focused on search engines and chatbots, messaging platforms are quietly becoming another important commerce channel. For brands and retailers, the opportunity isn’t simply to automate customer service, but to create persistent, personalised conversations that support discovery, purchase and loyalty in the same place consumers are already spending their time.

🛍️ TikTok Shop is borrowing Amazon Prime’s playbook. TikTok is reportedly testing a paid membership program, TikTok Shop Plus, offering benefits including free shipping, exclusive discounts and member-only offers as it looks to deepen loyalty and keep shoppers from completing purchases elsewhere. The move reflects a broader shift in social commerce: platforms are no longer competing solely on discovery and entertainment; they’re investing in deeper customer relationships that encourage shoppers to stay within their ecosystem. Membership programs increase purchase frequency, reduce shopper churn and create stronger reasons to return. For brands, this signals the continued maturation of social commerce. As platforms become destinations rather than just acquisition channels, decisions around assortment, exclusive launches, loyalty benefits and investment will become increasingly important as TikTok competes not just for attention, but for a greater share of retail spend.

🛒 Marketplaces are cementing their place in Australia’s retail infrastructure. A recent report by Inside Retail Australia revealed that Australian consumers spent $18.9 billion on online marketplaces in 2025, making them the fastest-growing online retail category, while marketplace apps are now used by 69% of online shoppers - almost on par with retailer websites. More importantly, the report argues marketplaces are no longer an experimental sales channel or a way to clear excess stock. They have become the starting point for product discovery, price comparison and purchase decisions. As AI increasingly influences how consumers shop, that importance is only set to grow, with clean product data and marketplace optimisation becoming critical for visibility. For brands and retailers, the question is no longer whether marketplaces should be part of the channel mix, but how to build the operational capabilities, product content and data foundations needed to compete effectively across them.

🗣️ Meta wants to turn social discovery into conversational commerce

If you’re a brand advertising on social, you’ll already know Meta’s commerce engine well: interrupt the scroll, earn attention through creative, and convert that interest into a product visit or purchase.

Muse Spark begins to rewrite that model. I’ve been a bit late to the party to write about Muse as Google ’s Universal Cart stole the show, but it is no less newsworthy.

Launched in April, Muse Spark is the first model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs and now powers the rebuilt Meta AI experience. It is multimodal, meaning it can interpret images as well as text, use tools and deploy multiple agents to work on different parts of a request simultaneously.

Whilst it performs a bunch of functions, it is the shopping experience that is most interesting to us at Arktic Fox . Shopping Mode, which was showcased at Cannes in June, pulls content from Instagram, Facebook and Threads and will leverage it to power its shopping experience.

Social today tops the list of tools used by Australians to discover – as seen in the recent IAB commerce and discovery report.

Social media is the top source used for discovery

With so much of discovery and inspiration occurring within social platforms today, it is a natural progression and one that seeks to provide a new and distinct commerce strategy for Meta – which has trailed TikTok in building a compelling commerce offering and one that will potentially extend Meta well beyond pay-to-play commerce advertising that has been at the core of their strategy. The distinction matters because a brand could perform strongly in Meta advertising and still be poorly represented in Meta’s new commerce experience.

The quick take: traditional Meta commerce vs Meta AI commerce

Meta’s biggest advantage is not the chatbot

ChatGPT and Google can already recommend products conversationally. Meta’s advantage is the enormous layer of social context, trust signals and UGC sitting underneath the conversation.

Shopping Mode draws on brand storytelling, product catalogue content, creator content and user interaction behaviour within their vast ecosystem to enable the social giant to re-invest shopping through AI. You can also be selective about what Meta AI draws on as source information, so it surfaces the brands or creators you trust most.

This gives Meta something traditional search engines and retailer assistants do not possess at the same scale on two fronts:

1. A view of what people watch, save, follow, share and ultimately trust.

2. A much deeper level of unstructured and structured product data to draw upon.

This is where creator content and strategy play a much more important commercial role. It is no longer valuable only because it generates reach, engagement or clicks. It also gives Meta’s AI more context about where a product fits, how it is used and which customers may find it relevant and will drive discoverability within Meta’s new shopping experience.

Finally, its newer shopping features can also combine products from Facebook Marketplace with options from across the web, then refine them by factors such as price, style or distance.

Product imagery key in the content equation

As many of Meta’s platforms are video and image-driven content, interpreting that content via AI is key to Muse Spark. It can analyse a photograph, understand what is in it and use that visual information to support a recommendation. Meta gives the example of scanning a product and asking how it compares with alternatives.

For brands, this elevates imagery beyond something designed to make a product page look appealing.

Clean hero shots help the AI identify the product. Multiple angles reveal its form and features. Lifestyle imagery provides context around style, scale and use. Creator videos show how the product behaves in the real world.

The stronger the alignment between the image and the structured product information behind it, the easier it becomes for an AI system to understand when that product belongs in an answer.

What this means for brands

• The first priority is product data. Titles, descriptions, attributes, pricing and inventory need to be complete, accurate and consistently synchronised. A conversational assistant cannot confidently recommend a product it does not properly understand.

• The second is visual and creator content. Brands should think beyond campaign assets and build a broader library to tell their product and brand stories, showing products from multiple angles, in realistic contexts and against specific customer needs.

• The third is measurement. As more discovery happens inside AI-generated answers, conventional metrics such as clicks and site sessions will provide an incomplete view. Brands will increasingly need to understand where products are being surfaced, what questions customers are asking and whether conversational discovery ultimately drives purchase.

Muse Spark is not replacing Meta advertising. It is adding another layer to Meta commerce - one where the opportunity to win begins before an ad is served.

The feed asked brands to capture attention. Muse Spark will ask them to earn the recommendation.

🦊 So who am I?

I’m an advisor, trainer and thought leader with 25+ years’ experience across digital, marketing, loyalty and commerce, working with consumer, FMCG and retail brands. I’m also the host of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition and have been recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert (2026), and Top 20 CMO (2018).

Before you go…

🧭 Need strategic clarity or expert advice? Let’s chat.

🛠️ Looking to build capability in your team? Explore training & workshops.

🎤 Planning an event or offsite? Book a keynote or thought leadership session.

Get in touch at teresa@arkticfox.io or find out more here, and don’t forget to follow along on LinkedIn and Substack.

There’s a lot of talk about autonomous agents making purchases on our behalf, and the repetitive, low-involvement purchases are likely to be the first delegated. But many shoppers still don’t trust an agent to complete a transaction for them. That got me thinking about the varying levels of trust in the agentic commerce space, because trust will be the deciding factor in adoption. And trust, I believe, is a continuum, and the issue is layered.

A recent Commerce, PayPal and Logica study of 1000 Australians reinforced just how far we have to go when it comes to autonomous agents making decisions without human intervention, with just 4% of Australians wanting help to complete the checkout process today as part of an agentic shopping experience. That’s likely to change as trust builds, but it’s a stark reminder of ambitions vs today’s reality.

The multi-layered trust gap

Trust in agentic commerce comes in various forms. There are macro issues of security and data, and then there are more nuanced issues around trust related to who is completing the transaction on behalf of the shopper. My firm belief is that the retailer is at a natural disadvantage here, because it lacks independence in the process.

Security: The Commerce, PayPal & Logica study from June found Australians are notably more concerned about security than shoppers in the US and UK, with unauthorised purchases, bank account breaches and personal data security ranking among the top barriers of adoption. If I don’t trust the protections are in place, I’m not delegating.

Institutional trust: How I feel about a sector and the providers within it is another dimension that impacts trust. Major supermarkets, for instance, have faced real scrutiny over alleged price gouging. So even though the weekly shop is mundane and repetitive, exactly the kind of task agentic commerce should win first, would shoppers trust the majors to buy for them, or lean toward an independent platform that compares across retailers? Any retailer entering the agentic era brings its existing reputation with it. Brands that have built strong consumer trust will have an advantage, while those facing credibility challenges may find shoppers less willing to delegate decisions.

Corporate self-interest: The third layer is about who the agent is actually optimising for. Even if I trust the sector and the security is airtight, I still need to believe the agent is acting in my interest rather than someone else’s. A retailer’s incentive is visible and direct, it profits from steering me toward its own products, higher-margin lines or stock it needs to move. Consumer AI platforms don’t have that same relationship to any one product, but they aren’t neutral either. We’re yet to see how sponsored placement and other media arrangements shape what an assistant recommends over time and as it is less visible, it is less likely to be front of mind for shoppers.

Guarantees and protections will reduce inertia and drive adoption. For Australians, that means control in the interim: a final say before the transaction is made, and the confidence that if something goes wrong, there’s recourse.

✨ Does Joy give us joy?

Kmart launched an AI shopping assistant. So naturally, I had to put it to the test.

Joy is Kmart’s new conversational shopping assistant, built on Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience and rolled out inside the Kmart app in June. It can take a photo or a text prompt and turn it into product recommendations, layer on a virtual try on for clothing, and preview furniture in your own space through a “see it in my space” function. Kmart’s Chief Customer Officer Bernard Wilson has described it as a way to help customers narrow their choices and find what is right for them, “from discovery to decision making, wherever they are.”

That is a big claim for a retail chatbot. So I gave Joy three everyday briefs and watched what it did with them.

Why I tested it

Every retailer seems to be racing toward the same idea right now. Woolworths has Olive, Bunnings has Buddy, Amazon has just folded Rufus into Alexa for Shopping, and ChatGPT and Google are both fighting for the moment a shopper starts typing “gifts for” into a search bar. The pitch is always the same: less scrolling, more finding. I wanted to know whether Joy actually delivers that, or whether it is another AI layer bolted on top of the same catalogue.

What I asked

I ran Joy through three real shopping scenarios: a birthday party for a four year old, redecorating a bedroom, and kitting out a first camping trip for two.

What it got right

Camping was Joy’s best moment. I told it I was going camping this weekend with no gear at all, and it built out a genuine plan in phases, tents and sleeping bags first, then cooking equipment. When I added that there were two of us and we wanted to cook burgers, it adjusted the whole list to two person tents and double sleeping options, then pulled together a burger station complete with a portable grill, a burger press and BBQ tools. It even offered to follow up with plates, cutlery or lighting for an evening meal by the fire. This is where a conversational assistant should shine: a big, slightly overwhelming task broken into a sequence a first timer can actually follow, with the product recommendations doing real work at each step.

What it struggled with

The other two briefs showed the cracks. When I said I was shopping for a four year old’s party, Joy gave me decorations, balloons and bunting. When I followed up that it was for a girl who likes mermaids, it happily pivoted to mermaid dolls, hair clips and blankets, but it had dropped the party context entirely and never circled back to the birthday theme, and it had also lost track of her age, asking me afterwards what age range I was shopping for. Context that I had given it two prompts earlier had simply fallen out of the conversation.

The bedroom redecoration followed a similar pattern. Joy asked about my style preference, I said neutral and modern, and it responded with a three phase plan (foundation and storage, comfort and textiles, finishing touches) that was close to a word for word repeat of the generic plan it had already given me before I mentioned my preferences at all. It then offered to generate an image showing how the pieces might look together in a bedroom setting. The image itself was pleasant enough, a soft, neutral, styled room, but it was not clear what it added over an existing product shot or a simple room mockup, and the disclaimer underneath reminded me the appearance and size of products in the image may not match the real thing anyway.

The other shortfall is that Joy’s recommendations take you through to the product page rather than adding straight to cart, so it is guiding discovery rather than completing the transaction for you.

Would I actually use it?

For a task with a clear, linear checklist, like camping, yes, without much hesitation. For anything that depends on the assistant holding two or three details in its memory at once, like a themed kids’ party, not yet. The core promise of a conversational assistant is that you should not have to repeat yourself, and right now Joy asks you to.

The verdict

Scoring Joy across the fundamentals, it lands at 6.8 out of 10. It understands intent (4/5) and is genuinely strong on product recommendations and shopping inspiration (4/5 each), pulling in relevant, well priced options at every turn. It is fair on solving real customer problems (3/5), useful for a straightforward brief but not yet for a layered one. Context and memory is where it falls short at just 2/5, which is where it let it down the most across both the party and the bedroom tests.

What this means for retailers

Compare that to where the category is actually heading. Amazon rebranded Rufus to Alexa for Shopping in May, explicitly to fuse Rufus’s product knowledge with Alexa’s memory of a customer’s stated preferences, so a parent who has already mentioned their kids’ ages and interests gets that folded into every future recommendation without repeating it. ChatGPT, meanwhile, tried the opposite bet, in app checkout through Instant Checkout, and pulled it back in March after fewer than fifteen Shopify merchants ever went live, pivoting instead to richer visual discovery and comparison tools. Google has taken a similar discovery-first approach through its own commerce protocol with Walmart, Target and Shopify on board. The pattern across all three is that the winners are not necessarily the ones with the flashiest generative feature. They are the ones that remember what you told them and get the fundamentals of search and comparison right.

That is the test Joy still has to pass. Decorations and camping gear are a reasonably forgiving category to launch in, low stakes, low complexity, easy wins. But a shopping assistant only earns its keep once it can hold a customer’s context across a longer, messier conversation, the kind real shopping trips actually are.

And that points to the bigger structural question every retailer chasing this trend needs to answer. Having a clever assistant that only lives on your own site or app is not, on its own, an AI strategy. Shoppers are increasingly starting their research in ChatGPT or Gemini before they ever open a retailer’s app, so the real competitive question is not just “how good is our assistant” but “how discoverable and well represented are we inside everyone else’s.”

Joy is a promising first step and clearly built on solid infrastructure. But right now, it gives more joy when the job is simple than when it is personal.

💬 So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

📊 Temu tops the charts while virtual assistants reshape product discovery. Despite all the attention on AI, social commerce and marketplaces, the IAB Australia’s latest Commerce & Discovery Report shows retailer websites remain central to the shopping journey, with 22.1 million Australians visiting an online retail or commerce brand in May alone. Temu topped the rankings ahead of Amazon and Woolworths, while supermarket websites recorded a 35% increase in time spent year-on-year. At the same time, the way consumers research products is becoming increasingly conversational, with 54% of Australians using AI assistants to discover products and 45% using live chat for research & discovery (use of live chat rises to 64% among 18–39 year olds). The message is clear: retailer websites remain critical, but the path to purchase and engagement approach is becoming increasingly conversational.

♻️ Australia’s resale market is entering a new competitive era. In just a few months, eBay removed transaction fees for eligible private sellers, Vinted launched locally, and Depop announced it will remove seller fees for Australian sellers from 22 July. Together, these moves highlight an important marketplace dynamic: inventory is the competitive advantage. The platform with the most attractive range of products is typically the platform that attracts the most buyers, making sellers the first battleground in the fight for market share. Fee reductions are therefore less about generosity and more about accelerating marketplace growth. The opportunity is significant, with Millennials and Gen Z increasingly embracing resale as a normal part of how they shop - driven by value, individuality and circular consumption rather than sustainability alone. For retailers and brands, it’s another reminder that recommerce is no longer a niche trend. It’s becoming an increasingly important part of the retail landscape, reshaping how consumers think about value, extending product lifecycles and creating new competition for the sale of new products.

🤖 The rapid growth of AI is reflected in the sheer volume of research now being published on the category. In recent weeks alone, we’ve seen reports analysing everything from AI market share and app adoption through to shopping behaviour, referral traffic and consumer trust. Sensor Tower’s State of AI 2026 report reinforces just how quickly AI has moved from experimentation to everyday behaviour. ChatGPT reached one billion downloads faster than any app in history, while global time spent using generative AI apps is projected to more than double year-on-year, reaching 36 billion hours in the first half of 2026. Consumer spending on AI apps is also expected to exceed US$4 billion over the same period, highlighting that AI is no longer just attracting curiosity, it’s becoming a utility people are willing to pay for. The next phase of AI won’t be defined by whether consumers adopt it, but by which brands and retailers become part of the experiences consumers are already using every day.

🦊 So who am I?

I’m an advisor, trainer and thought leader with 25+ years’ experience across digital, marketing, loyalty and commerce, working with consumer, FMCG and retail brands. I’m also the host of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition and have been recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert (2026), and Top 20 CMO (2018).

Before you go…

🧭 Need strategic clarity or expert advice? Let’s chat.

🛠️ Looking to build capability in your team? Explore training & workshops.

🎤 Planning an event or offsite? Book a keynote or thought leadership session.

Get in touch at teresa@arkticfox.io or find out more here, and don’t forget to follow along on LinkedIn and Substack.

While the name has changed, our focus remains the same: helping retailers and brand manufacturers make sense of the trends, technologies and shifts shaping the future of digital, data and eCommerce.

As the lines between commerce, customer experience, retail media, loyalty, marketplaces and AI continue to blur, we wanted a name that better reflects the increasingly connected nature of the industry and the insights we’ll continue to bring you each fortnight.

One of the more significant commerce announcements this month may have flown under the radar.

Google revealed that Bunnings, Adore Beauty, Kogan, The Iconic and Petbarn will be among the first Australian retailers connected to its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), enabling product, pricing, inventory and loyalty data to flow directly into Google’s ecosystem.

On the surface, this sounds like another technology integration.

I think it’s much bigger than that.

For more than two decades, Google has helped shoppers discover products. Increasingly, it wants to help them buy them and eventually make decisions for them.

The introduction of UCP, combined with Google’s plans for a Universal Cart that follows shoppers across Search, YouTube, Gemini and Gmail, signals a future where AI doesn’t just help shoppers discover products. It helps them compare, shortlist and ultimately purchase them.

What’s particularly interesting is that Google is positioning itself at the centre of the next wave of AI-powered shopping, and it’s well placed to do it: shopping activity across its services happens more than one billion times a day, and its Shopping Graph holds more than 60 billion product listings.

However, with shoppers migrating to other AI consumer platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and others, Google is no longer the only viable and dominant option to discover and shop. Shoppers now, and increasingly will, have multiple ways to engage in agentic shopping, and Google is likely to be one of several options used. Shoppers will decide which platform they trust most to manage their agentic shopping needs, and that won’t necessarily be Google for all shoppers.

Google - Friend, Foe or Both?

For retailers, the introduction of UCP raises some important questions and legitimate concerns.

1. If product discovery increasingly happens through AI-powered experiences, visibility may become less dependent on website optimisation and more dependent on the quality of the data feeding those ecosystems. This means product content, inventory accuracy, pricing, promotions and loyalty data suddenly become even more important.

2. The role of loyalty will also be rewritten. In a world where agentic commerce engines make purchase decisions on a shopper’s behalf, factoring in their loyalty membership and the value it delivers, retailers need to start thinking about how loyalty programs are engineered to drive selection in an agentic shopping experience.

3. But perhaps the bigger question for retailers is this: if Google has the inventory and can execute the transaction, what happens to my online audience, and my ability to monetise it through retail media? Does the retailer simply become a supplier of inventory into what essentially becomes Google’s agentic commerce marketplace? In a world like that, brand promise and preference have never mattered more.

The market is changing fast, and many retailers are not moving quickly enough to keep pace. The real question isn’t whether to engage with agentic commerce. It’s whether retailers are solving for the right problems, and understand the magnitude of the change, in order to adapt their business model so it is ready for the AI era.

💬 So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

🤖 Google AI Max signals the next evolution of search advertising. Google has rolled out AI Max to Australian advertisers, moving keywords further from being strict instructions and more towards signals that help AI understand intent. Google claims advertisers are seeing up to 27% more conversions, while early case studies suggest stronger performance from broader query matching and AI-powered optimisation. The bigger implication is that search is becoming increasingly intent-led rather than keyword-led. As AI-powered search experiences continue to evolve, marketers may need to spend less time managing keywords and more time ensuring their content, products and landing pages provide the context AI needs to match consumers with the right solutions. The future of search advertising looks less like keyword management and more like teaching machines how to understand your business.

♻️ Vinted’s arrival is another signal that recommerce is becoming mainstream. European marketplace Vinted has quietly launched in Australia, partnering with Australia Post and entering an increasingly competitive second-hand market alongside eBay, Depop and Facebook Marketplace. While resale has traditionally been viewed through a sustainability lens, the growth of platforms like Vinted is increasingly being driven by value, affordability and circular consumption. In Europe, Vinted has grown into a multi-billion-dollar marketplace with more than €10 billion in annual sales. The bigger question for retailers is whether resale remains a niche category or becomes a permanent layer of the retail ecosystem. As cost-of-living pressures continue and younger consumers become increasingly comfortable buying pre-owned products, the line between new and second-hand retail continues to blur.

🛍️ Meta wants to turn product discovery into purchase without leaving the feed. Ahead of Cannes Lions, Meta unveiled a suite of new commerce capabilities including Live Video Ads, expanded creator affiliate tools and new checkout experiences designed to shorten the path from discovery to purchase. The most interesting development is the expansion of Live Video Ads, allowing brands to amplify live shopping content beyond existing followers and move closer to the highly integrated commerce experiences that have seen success in Asian markets. While live commerce has struggled to gain the same traction in Western markets, Meta’s latest moves suggest social platforms are still determined to bring content, creators and transactions closer together. The broader trend is clear: discovery, consideration and purchase are increasingly converging into a single experience rather than separate stages of the funnel.

🎙️ New Episode: Unpacking the Digital Shelf - APAC Edition

Many brands spend years trying to earn their place on retail shelves. They pitch buyers, fight for space and hope their products will sell once they finally get there. But what if you flipped that model? What if you built so much demand online that retailers actually came looking for you?

That’s exactly what today’s guest has done. Jaimee Vilela is the Managing Director of Cooki Haircare, a fast-growing Australian haircare brand she acquired just a few years ago. At the time, the business was doing just four sales a day.

Since then, Jaimee and her team have transformed Cooki into a multi-million-dollar brand powered by a passionate community of customers and a strong digital-first strategy. That demand has translated into retail momentum, with Cooki now ranged across the Go Vita network across Australia.

In this episode, Jaimee shares the unconventional path from small eCommerce acquisition to national retail presence, and what it takes to build a brand that customers and retailers both want.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Jump in 👇🏼

• From four sales a day to a multimillion-dollar brand (03:44)

• Why buying a tiny business beat starting from scratch (04:30)

• The customer interviews that shaped Cooki’s growth strategy (09:13)

• How a rebrand unlocked the next stage of growth (11:40)

• Building a community of 3,000 superfans (15:01)

• The power of replying to every customer like a human (17:05)

• Turning unhappy customers into brand advocates (19:53)

• How Cooki customers helped get the brand into Go Vita (23:06)

• The accidental retail movement that drove national ranging (27:24)

• Why digital demand is fueling in-store growth (30:32)

• What big brands can learn from startup operators (33:29)

🦊 So who am I?

I’m an advisor, trainer and thought leader with 25+ years’ experience across digital, marketing, loyalty and commerce, working with consumer, FMCG and retail brands. I’m also the host of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition and have been recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert (2026), and Top 20 CMO (2018).

Before you go…

🧭 Need strategic clarity or expert advice? Let’s chat.

🛠️ Looking to build capability in your team? Explore training & workshops.

🎤 Planning an event or offsite? Book a keynote or thought leadership session.

Get in touch at teresa@arkticfox.io or find out more here, and don’t forget to follow along on LinkedIn and Substack.

The day is finally here.

We’re really excited to announce the launch of the Inside Digital & eCommerce 2026 Report, in partnership with Six Degrees Executive.

As it’s sixth year in market, this year’s report takes a slightly different direction. For the first time, it focuses exclusively on retail and brand manufacturing, allowing us to go deeper and deliver more focused insights across these sectors, which are inextricably linked.

The report explores how brands are investing, building capability and prioritising their focus across eCommerce and the digital shelf, AI, loyalty, omni-channel experience, retail media and more.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the study by completing the survey, as well a big thanks to our sponsors Amperity, Bloomreach and Salsify, whose support helped bring the study to life.

Download the report

So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

🤖 Search is starting to look a lot less like… search. New Google AI Mode data suggests people are asking longer, messier and far more human questions. Queries are now averaging three times the length of traditional searches, follow-up questions have grown more than 40% month-on-month in the US, and more than one in six searches are now non-text using voice, images and video. People are increasingly using AI to help them decide, not just discover, shifting from “find me a product” toward “help me choose”. Search is becoming less about retrieving information and more about helping people think. For brands, that raises the bar on the quality, structure and context of the information AI can access.

🛒 Google wants to become the shopping basket before the shopping basket. Google has launched an intelligent shopping cart experience which aims to act as a new hub for shopping. The moment a user adds a product to their cart, Universal Cart gets to work finding deals and price drops and alerting users when products are back in stock. Powered by Gemini, the smart cart even helps shoppers understand if they have decided to purchase products that are not compatible and suggests an alternative. In a move that will rattle the retail industry, Universal Cart allows shoppers to check out directly via Google, further reducing the flow of referral traffic to retailer sites, whilst also allowing a user to take their basket and checkout via the retailer. Google has already locked in partnerships with Nike, Sephora, Target, Walmart and more - with Universal Cart checkout features set to roll out imminently.

💳 The latest For Love or Money study from The Point of Loyalty suggests Australians more than ever value money back in their pockets. Inline with consumers desire for brands to make their lives easier and their insatiable demand for convenience, paid subscription programs with strong delivery propositions were also found to be in favour. In a world of growing program fatigue, passive points accumulation alone is becoming harder to defend. Loyalty is increasingly shifting from “collect and redeem” mechanics toward ongoing utility, access and immediate value.

✈️ WHSmith has launched an AI shopping assistant at Melbourne Airport, turning travel retail into the latest testing ground for conversational commerce. Airports have always been high-intent environments where shoppers are often buying with a clear mission and a tight timeframe. Helping them quickly navigate options, discover relevant products and reduce friction sounds straightforward. But in a blended environment where AI assistance via mobile and the in-store experience need to work as one, accuracy and relevance in the moment are non negotiable.

We hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter! 🦊

🦊 inside digital & ecommerce 2026 report

Download the report

✍🏼 our latest insights

Inside Digital & eCommerce 2026 in 10 Charts – Retail

We break down the findings of the Retail section of the report into 10 easy-to-digest charts. From investment trends and capability gaps to changing customer expectations, it’s a quick snapshot of the insights every retail leader should have on their radar.

Inside Digital & eCommerce 2026 in 10 Charts – Brand Manufacturers

We break down the findings of the Brand Manufacturing (FMCG/CPG/Industrial) section of the report into 10 easy-to-digest charts. From AI adoption and capability development to investment priorities and evolving shopper expectations, it’s a quick snapshot of the insights every brand leader should have on their radar.

🚚 Arktic Bytes is moving

Arktic Bytes is moving from your inbox to your feed.

This will be one of the last newsletters you receive by email - but don’t worry, it’s not disappearing forever! Arktic Bytes will live exclusively on LinkedIn and Substack alongside our latest thinking across digital transformation, commerce, data, AI & loyalty.

Thank you for being part of the Arktic Bytes community and reading along with us.

We hope you’ll continue the journey with us on LinkedIn and Substack.

🎙️ unpacking the digital shelf: apac edition

Retail media is attracting more investment than ever. Budgets are increasing. Networks are expanding. Expectations are rising. But one big question still sits underneath all of it: what actually drives performance?

Because for many brands in the APAC region, retail media still feels like a black box. There are metrics. There are case studies. But there isn’t always clarity on what actually drives growth and which levers brands need to pull to shift performance.

To answer that question, Coles 360 partnered with Circana to test a series of hypotheses around what truly drives retail media performance. Through the research, they identified eight potential growth drivers. Five were proven through the data and are now shaping how Coles works with suppliers across planning, scorecarding and growth.

We unpack the principles in this episode.

Download the full Retail Media Best Practices Playbook here.

Listen on Spotify

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In this episode, we unpack the key findings from the newly released Inside Digital & eCommerce 2026 report from Arktic Fox & Six Degrees Executive.

The report is a deep dive into how Australian retailers and brand manufacturers are navigating the next era of digital commerce, drawing on insights from more than 100 senior leaders across retail, eCommerce, marketing, digital and retail media. The conversation explores how AI and agentic commerce are reshaping the digital shelf, why loyalty is becoming a bigger strategic priority, and how marketplaces, quick commerce and retail media are intensifying execution complexity for brands.

We also examine the growing importance of product content and data foundations in an AI-driven discovery environment, the widening gap between ambition and capability, and where retailers and brands remain misaligned in the race to deliver better connected commerce experiences.

From AI readiness and retail media investment to omnichannel execution and product data collaboration, this episode is essential listening for leaders shaping the future of retail and eCommerce in Australia.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

📈 chart of the month

AI search is reshaping visibility - but local advantage still matters

New research from Jaywing shows Amazon dominating AI-visibility across 6 of 7 major categories in Australia, particularly in Home & Living and Electronics, where its scale and product breadth give it a clear advantage. But the story isn’t one-sided.

In categories like Grocery - Australian retailers are holding strong for now - Woolworths and Coles together account for close to half of all visibility. The takeaway is an important one: AI doesn’t automatically reward the biggest player, it rewards the most relevant and credible one.

For brands and retailers alike, structured data, authoritative content, quality cues and reputation are all becoming critical to staying visible in an AI-first shopping era.

🔗 what we’re reading

📰 For Love or Money 2026 Report | The Point of Loyalty

📰 Australian Retail AI Data | Jaywing

📰 Capgemini: AI agents will compress shopping, weaken loyalty and force brands to compete on emotional trust, as convenience becomes a commodity | Mi3

🎧 Retail’s Great Concentration, Tapestry’s Comeback, and the Dumbest Story of the Year | Remarkable Retail

🦊 so who am I?

I’m an advisor, trainer and thought leader with 25+ years’ experience across digital, marketing, loyalty and commerce, working with consumer, FMCG and retail brands. I’m also the host of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition and have been recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert (2026), and Top 20 CMO (2018).

Before you go…

🧭 Need strategic clarity or expert advice? Let’s chat.

🛠️ Looking to build capability in your team? Explore training & workshops.

🎤 Planning an event or offsite? Book a keynote or thought leadership session.

Get in touch at teresa@arkticfox.io or find out more here, and don’t forget to follow along on LinkedIn and Substack.

We have also launched Arktic Fox on Substack, creating one place where our thought leadership and observations all live in the one place including newsletter, articles, commentary and podcast episodes.

In this month’s edition, we explore how AI is continuing to shape the discovery journey, the growing convergence between retail media and social platforms, and who is winning on the digital shelf. We also share a new episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC with Vera Skocic from Ryobi ANZ, unpacking how brands can influence the path to purchase even when they do not own the checkout.

So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

🛒 Costco attributes $470M in revenue to product recommendations. In its latest earnings update, Costco highlighted the growing impact of personalisation, with recommendation driven sales contributing significantly to performance. The model is underpinned by its membership structure, where every transaction is linked to a customer, giving Costco a consistent and comprehensive view of behaviour across channels. This allows the retailer to move beyond surface level personalisation and shape more relevant, data driven experiences across its ecosystem.

🤖 John Lewis bets on AI powered shopping and TikTok Shop. John Lewis has announced an £800 million investment into technology, with AI powered shopping tools and social commerce forming a central part of the strategy. As part of the plan, the retailer is also trialling TikTok Shop for 90 days around key seasonal moments, allowing customers to discover and purchase products directly within the platform.

🤖 OpenAI dumps instant check out and Walmart integrates Sparky into AI assistants. After OpenAI announced it will scale back instant check out, Walmart has announced Sparky its AI assistant is being embedded into ChatGPT and Gemini with discussions also occurring with Claude. The OpenAI and Walmart partnership which allowed consumers to instantly check out via ChatGPT hit major road-bumps with accuracy and delivered much lower than expected conversion rates.

🤖 Woolworths’ AI assistant goes rogue, starts talking about its mother. Woolworths’ AI powered shopping assistant Olive has reportedly produced a number of unusual interactions with customers, including references to a “mother”, memories and other personal details that the system does not actually possess. Designed to help shoppers with tasks such as building grocery lists or resolving delivery queries, the assistant instead delivered responses that appeared far more human than intended. This reinforces that whilst we are making huge strides in AI, there is still a lot brands need to contend with to deliver flawless and valuable experiences.

📦 Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026 shows online spend reaching $82.6bn, with growth becoming more distributed across smaller, more frequent purchases and declining basket sizes. At the same time, shoppers are spreading spend across more brands and channels, raising expectations at every stage from discovery through to delivery and returns.

We hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter! 🦊

✍️ our latest insights

🔎 inside digital & ecommerce survey 2026

If you have followed me for a while, you will know that each year we run a report with Six Degrees Executive on what is happening on the ground across digital, marketing and eCommerce teams in Australia.

For 2026, we are taking a more deliberate focus on Retail and Consumer brands, going deeper on the capabilities, challenges and opportunities shaping eCommerce, marTech and data, retail media, AI and more as complexity continues to rise.

If you are a leader in CPG, FMCG, brand manufacturing or retail, I would value your input.

• 12 to 15 minutes to complete
• All responses are anonymous
• Contributors receive early access to the final report

Submissions are closing soon, so this is one of the last opportunities to have your say.

If you are open to sharing your perspective, you can take the survey here.

🦊 join us on Substack

You may have received an email from us a couple of weeks ago announcing that we’re now on Substack.

It’s where all Arktic Fox content will live, from articles and Arktic Bytes to podcast conversations and industry observations. Bringing everything together in one place allows us to go a bit deeper on the topics shaping digital, retail and eCommerce, while creating a more connected space to share ideas, insights and feedback.

We’ll continue publishing regularly, with articles a few times each month, a constant feed of thoughts and observations, the Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC podcast episodes, and Arktic Bytes as our monthly roundup.

If you haven’t received an invite yet, you can visit our Substack page to subscribe and follow along. Hope to see you there.

Subscribe Here

🎙️ unpacking the digital shelf: apac edition

This month, I sat down with Vera Skocic, Head of Customer and Strategy at Ryobi ANZ.

Ryobi sells exclusively through Bunnings. They don’t own the checkout or transaction data, yet they’ve built a connected digital experience that helps shoppers navigate their range of over 200 tools and arrive in store ready to buy.

In this episode, we cover:

• How a clear business problem shaped every technology decision

• Building the data foundations to power AI and personalisation

• Delivering a more seamless experience between brand and retailer through tools like comparison, wishlists and cart integration

• Driving more qualified demand into store while reducing returns

A practical look at what it takes to build a connected customer experience within a retailer led model.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

📈 chart of the month

When you use AI tools to help with a purchase, which of the following best describes what you usually do?

New research from Semrush shows how AI is starting to shape the buyer journey, without fully replacing traditional discovery channels. While many shoppers are using AI to narrow down options, they’re still turning to search, reviews and retailer sites to validate decisions and complete purchases.

The pattern suggests AI is becoming an important entry point to discovery, but not the final destination. For brands, visibility in AI matters, but it needs to be supported by strong product content, credible reviews and a consistent presence across the wider ecosystem where purchase decisions are ultimately confirmed.

🔗 what we’re reading

✍🏼 Content alone isn’t enough: Why SEO now requires distribution | SearchEngineLand

✍🏼 TikTok spotlights new growth opportunities for Australian Brands | RetailWorld

✍🏼 How will marketers balance AI and human connection in 2026? | InsideRetail

✍🏼 Evolution or alarm? What Starbucks’ revamped loyalty program says about keeping customers engaged | EMARKETER

✍🏼 Amazon reviews AI processes after website outages disrupt shoppers | Retail Gazette

✍🏼 As retail media growth slows, measurement takes center stage | EMARKETER

✍🏼 Middle East war highlights ‘vulnerability’ of Australian fashion industry | InsideRetail

📝 Australia Post eCommerce report 2026 | Australia Post

🤝 we’re here to help

Change is the new normal, and we know it can feel like a lot to navigate. That’s why we work alongside leaders and their teams to tackle challenges across digital, data, and eCommerce, helping you make sense of complexity and move forward with confidence.

Whether it’s defining or clarifying strategy, upskilling through training, or inspiring new ideas through thought leadership, we meet you where you are and support you in making things happen.

Get in touch - we’d love to hear from you.

Subscribe now

From many of the discussions I am having in market, one theme continues to surface, the ground is shifting fast and teams are being expected to do more with less. This month’s newsletter explores what that some of that shift looks like in practice, from quick commerce acceleration to AI-powered comparison and the growing strategic weight of the post-purchase customer experience.

So what’s been happening in the digital, data & eComm space?

📱 Meta explores AI powered shopping research tool. Meta is reportedly piloting a shopping research feature within its AI web browser for select US users, allowing shoppers to request product suggestions and receive curated results featuring product imagery with information about the brand, price and retailer websites. Recommendations can be tailored based on a user’s location, though checkout remains on the merchant’s site. The test reflects the growing role of AI chat interfaces in early-stage product discovery, as comparison and consideration increasingly shift into conversational environments.

🪚 Bunnings launches on Uber Eats with over 30,000 products. Launching across 15 locations in Australia before rolling out nationwide and into New Zealand, the move builds on a Melbourne trial and an earlier same day parcel delivery partnership introduced in 2024. From last minute DIY fixes and garden projects to urgent worksite supplies, hardware is firmly entering the on-demand economy. The message is clear: convenience is no longer confined to food and grocery. Speed, flexibility and app-based access are becoming part of the core retail proposition, even in traditionally store led categories.

🤖 OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT. OpenAI has begun rolling out ads within ChatGPT for free users in the US, marking a significant shift in its monetisation strategy. According to Mashable, ads will appear in a clearly separated format alongside responses and will be labelled to avoid confusion with generated answers, with users able to opt out temporarily. The move signals growing commercial pressure on AI platforms to scale revenue beyond subscriptions. It also positions ChatGPT as an emerging intent-driven media channel, reshaping how brands approach discoverability as consumers increasingly ask AI tools for recommendations, comparisons and purchase guidance.

🛒 Amazon to challenge Woolworths, Coles with Harris Farm fresh food deal. Amazon Australia has partnered with Harris Farm Markets to launch fresh food delivery, beginning in Sydney with same day and next day options and free delivery over $100 for Prime members. The move extends Amazon’s existing range of more than 55,000 non-perishable grocery items, enabling customers to complete a full grocery shop including fresh produce, meat and dairy. Grocery remains one of Amazon’s last major growth frontiers in Australia. As speed, convenience and digital discovery become baseline expectations in food retail, competitive pressure on Woolworths, Coles and independent networks will only intensify.

🚚 The Iconic boosts delivery convenience with Saturday delivery via Australia Post. Fashion and lifestyle platform The Iconic has strengthened its delivery proposition across the eastern seaboard of Australia, introducing Saturday delivery, both standard and express, in partnership with Australia Post. Extending fulfilment beyond the traditional weekday window reflects a broader shift in expectation. Customers are not just demanding faster delivery, they are expecting more control over when and how their orders arrive.

We hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter! 🦊

✍️ our latest insights

The race for immediacy: How quick commerce is reshaping grocery in Australia

It is hard to imagine everyday life without platforms like Uber Eats or DoorDash. What began as restaurant delivery has quietly evolved into something far more consequential for grocery and convenience brands.

Uber Eats arrived in Australia nearly a decade ago and has since surpassed one billion deliveries nationwide…

read more →

Why fulfillment & returns are the next frontier in loyalty

For more than a decade, retailers have invested heavily in building faster, more seamless online experiences. Search has improved. Checkouts have shortened. Omnichannel integration has strengthened. The objective has been clear: remove friction, increase conversion, and drive efficient digital growth.

read more →

Retailers, AI search and the future of discoverability

For years, discovery on the digital shelf largely depended on broad search engines like Google, alongside retailer search and category listings built around keyword matching. Shoppers typed in what they wanted, scanned ranked lists, and clicked through options.

That model is now shifting.

read more →

🔎 inside digital & ecommerce survey 2026

If you have followed me for a while, you will know that each year we run a report with Six Degrees Executive on what is happening on the ground across digital, marketing and eCommerce teams in Australia.

For 2026, we are taking a more deliberate focus on Retail and Consumer brands, going deeper on the capabilities, challenges and opportunities shaping eCommerce, marTech and data, retail media, AI and more as complexity continues to rise.

If you are a leader in CPG, FMCG, brand manufacturing or retail, I would value your input.

• 10 to 12 minutes to complete
• All responses are anonymous
• Contributors receive early access to the final report

Complete the Survey

🦊 introducing: the digital shelf accelerator

Over the past few months, many of our conversations have centred on the same question: are we truly set up to win on the digital shelf as AI reshapes discovery? To support brands navigating that shift, we’re launching the Arktic Fox Digital Shelf Accelerator in Melbourne this May.

A practical, in-person workshop focused on frameworks, capability and immediate application, designed to help teams prioritise what matters most. If this sits in your remit, I’d love to see you in the room. Register your interest through the link below - limited spots available!

Register Your Interest

🎙️ unpacking the digital shelf: apac edition

This month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Belinda Gruebner, Fractional CMO and former CMO at Moose Toys, to explore how discovery in the toy industry has shifted from catalogue driven retail to creator led, always on storytelling. Having known Belinda for over a decade, it was a full circle conversation reflecting on how marketing has evolved from seasonal TV campaigns to community powered discovery, AI influenced search and omni channel journeys shaped as much by parents as by kids.

In the episode, we unpack what it really takes to scale digital and marketing capability across global markets, rethink packaging and owned content as part of the broader retail experience and navigate the ethical and regulatory realities reshaping the digital shelf, including Australia’s new under 16 social media restrictions. It is an honest and practical conversation about content, community and the responsibility brands carry as technology continues to accelerate.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

📈 chart of the month

Detailed Product Information Drives Trust in AI Recommendations

New data from Salsify’s 2026 Consumer Research Report shows that detailed product descriptions and specifications are the biggest driver of trust in AI generated recommendations, influencing 31% of shoppers. Brand recognition follows at 27%, while personalised explanations and customer reviews each contribute 25%.

For brands, the implication is clear: product content is no longer a hygiene factor. The quality, structure and depth of your data will directly influence how AI represents your brand and whether shoppers feel confident enough to convert. In AI-mediated environments, incomplete or generic content does not just reduce visibility, it erodes trust at the point of decision.

🔗 what we’re reading & listening to

📰 2026 Marketplace Consumer Report | Pattern

📰 Reimagining omnichannel CX in the age of AI | qualtrics xm

📰 Emails that sell: how top retail brands drive revenue | Bloomreach

✍🏼 ‘Inherently reckless’: Retailers’ inflated owned media asset values are ‘wreaking havoc’; telcos, finance the biggest laggards in first global report on $573bn owned media sector | Mi3

✍🏼 CBD retail vacancies fall to lowest rate on record | InsideRetail

✍🏼 Snapchat+ hits 25 million subscribers, signaling a shift beyond ads | EMARKETER

🎙️Agentic Commerce Is Here: What Shopify’s UCP Means for Ecommerce | Add to Cart

🎙️Target Roundel’s OpenAI Pilot; Netto’s Programmatic Expansion; Tesco’s Shopping Habits | This Week in Retail Media

🤝 we’re here to help

Change is the new normal, and we know it can feel like a lot to navigate. That’s why we work alongside leaders and their teams to tackle challenges across digital, data, and eCommerce, helping you make sense of complexity and move forward with confidence.

Whether it’s defining or clarifying strategy, upskilling through training, or inspiring new ideas through thought leadership, we meet you where you are and support you in making things happen.

Get in touch - we’d love to hear from you.

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