How AI Shopping Impacts Main Street Retail

For stores in downtown shopping districts and suburban strip malls, AI shopping could be an opportunity to play to a merchant’s strengths.

Agentic commerce — the concept of AI agents shopping for humans — is a hot topic, in part because of commercial opportunity amid uncontrollable uncertainty.

Shopping Experience

“Agentic commerce is accelerating a bifurcation we’re already seeing,” said Andrew Stern, CEO and co-founder of Quilt Software, which makes operational tools for independent retailers.

This bifurcation, according to Stern, is at the separation of commodity buying and experience-based shopping.

On the one hand, if someone wants a commodity item or a widely available brand, almost any store will do. A shopper might ask ChatGPT to order more Tide laundry detergent, and not care who sells it. What matters is getting Tide delivered quickly at a low price.

On the other hand are the retailers that Stern’s company serves: mom-and-pop operations on Main Street.

These violin shops, wine boutiques, and pet stores offer a local experience. Shoppers talk to an expert in person or let a dog sniff out the right bone. And these companies are part of our local neighborhoods.

The extent to which specialty merchants can transfer that shopping experience into agentic commerce is either an opportunity or a danger.

Image of a male merchant wiht a beard in his wine shop

For brick-and-click shops, expertise and experience are advantages.

Parking Meters

A parking meter might seem like an odd analogy for AI. Yet both impact Main Street businesses.

Take the small downtown shop in Idaho that sold both specialty coffee and leather goods. It was a husband-and-wife operation. She was the barista. He was the one hand-sewing leather BBQ aprons while everyone watched.

The business was a destination. It was also profitable until the city added parking meters.

The extra $1.25 per hour it now costs to park outside the shop changed the dynamic. Sales declined.

Adapting

The coffee and leather business faced a danger that could also have been an opportunity. The company could have run a campaign offering to pay for parking when you buy a mocha or a latte.

Agentic AI is another external force that could harm independent retailers. Yet many of these business owners have shown they can adapt.

“The big moment for our customer type — the specialty retailers — was Covid, where suddenly if you didn’t have an online presence, you kind of didn’t exist,” Stern said. “That got a lot of our retailers online, and it was a very good thing in terms of modernizing the experience.”

The Wine Guy

Modernization did not erase what makes these stores valuable; it revealed it.

Stern described how agentic commerce might make shoppers even more aware of the difference between a synthetic and authentic experience.

“The synthetic experience that the large players are trying to create almost validates and drives people toward the authentic experience they’re having at their local merchant,” he said.

Consider the neighborhood wine shop. The owner knows your name. He remembers what you bought last time and whether you liked it. When you tell him you are grilling lamb for dinner, he doesn’t send you an algorithmic list; he smiles and says, “I have got just the thing.”

An AI agent cannot replicate that personal recognition and service, but it can point toward them.

If agentic commerce can quickly handle commodity buying, it frees consumers to spend more time and attention on experiential purchases — the human, high-touch moments that small retailers excel at.

Playing to Strengths

Independent retailers do not need to compete with AI for efficiency. They need to highlight what automation cannot offer.

For a pet store, this approach might mean hiring expert staff or hosting adoption events that become community rituals. For a jeweler, it is the conversation that starts with a birthday and ends with a story. For a café, it’s the warmth that can’t be downloaded.

In the coming years, AI will likely become the first point of contact for many shoppers. The agent will handle search and selection. The specialty merchants who succeed will be the ones discoverable within that system and differentiated once the customer walks through the door.

Agentic commerce may change how customers shop, but it will not change why they buy. The merchants who win will turn human touch into their strongest signal in an AI-driven world.