Now Yes… or Not So Much: Ecommerce is Supposed to Change
We live in a state of permanent digital hysteria. Every week on LinkedIn there’s an unspoken competition to see who can publish the most visionary prediction about “what is sure to happen.” Just a few months ago, the catchphrase was: “AI won’t take your job, someone who knows how to use it will.”
Bullshit. Of course AI will replace people by taking over certain tasks—just as previous technologies have done.
“The supposed “differentiating factor” of “knowing how to use it” doesn’t hold either, because access to AI is democratizing at absurd speed: that was the point all along, never to leave it in the hands of a select few with superior skills to extract value.”
There will always be groups of people more or less skilled, but convergence starts the moment AI is perceived as a facilitator. If everyone has the same hammer, what matters is not who knows how to swing it, but who has something truly solid to build with it.
A new mantra is “AI commerce.” The umpteenth iteration of the same discourse: “Now, finally, digital commerce is going to change forever.” Will it? Let’s take a breath and put it in perspective.
Ecommerce has always had one goal: to grow by eliminating friction
Everything that has happened in the last twenty years of digital commerce can be summarized in one idea: sell more with less effort from the user, and increase channel’s share (except for ‘pure players’). Companies don’t live by incremental sales alone: the goal was to grow a channel’s share at lower structural costs than physical retail.
Ecommerce has always aimed to become “everywhere & anytime commerce”: buy wherever, whenever, however. Looking at it through the lens of the seven deadly sins, AI clearly impacts one in particular: sloth.
Key Stages in the Evolution of Ecommerce
1. Marketplaces: Digital Shopping Becomes Routine
Amazon, Alibaba, and the like didn’t invent ecommerce — they made it habitual. Endless product availability, trust in the process, flawless logistics, elimination of friction and minimization of barriers wherever possible (payments, exchanges, returns…), and the perception that buying online is easier than doing it offline — that was the real shift.
2. M-commerce: The Mobile Device as the Funnel’s Center of Gravity
When smartphones arrived, the industry went into panic mode, fearing —as it ultimately happened— that a significant share of user time would shift from computers to mobile devices. PCs remained relevant for work and productivity tasks, but lost prominence in everyday digital consumption.
How do we get someone to buy on a screen barely 4.5 inches? Initially, they just “ported the website to mobile,” but the real revolution came with apps, which integrated shopping into a complete, continuous journey:
Inspiration → browsing → purchase → post-purchase → advocacy on social media
If inspiration already existed on mobile, everything had to happen without leaving the device. The phone stopped being a channel and became the place where everything was meant to happen.
3. Social Commerce: From Discovery to Checkout… in Theory
Instagram and TikTok, born as inspiration channels, rushed to integrate native catalogs and payments. The problem: mobile screens are still small, and no feed can display a full catalog. Too many clicks, too much friction. The feed becomes a sample, showing only a curated selection.
From there, interesting spin-offs emerged, such as Live Shopping (which I analyzed in depth in this ESIC article). Inspired by Asia, it combined streaming + ecommerce + presenter/influencer to drive impulse purchases in real time. Extremely popular in countries like China, where it functions as a hybrid between “TV shopping 3.0” and a fandom concert; in the West, results have been sporadic at best, and it hasn’t gone beyond an experiment. An attempt to turn entertainment into instant checkout.
4. Voice Commerce: An Unmitigated Failure
Alexa was supposed to be the new shopping channel. In reality, it was used for routine actions (“play music,” “turn on the lights”), and attempts to turn it into a shopping vehicle—“Alexa, buy milk”—went nowhere.
“In the realm of voice commerce (v-commerce), the absence of a visual interface meant that beyond routine or replenishment purchases, repeated and exploratory use proved impossible.”
An unmitigated failure, acknowledged by Amazon with measurable data.
5. Search Commerce: The Buyer is Already an Algorithm
Today, Google shows an AI-generated answer (Gemini) before any SEO result or ad. The search engine no longer delivers information—it gives recommendations directly. Whether this will work in the long term remains to be seen, but half of LinkedIn is already lecturing on it.
“AI Commerce”: Agents That Buy for You
The next level is clear: don’t search (or “find”), don’t filter, don’t compare, don’t decide—or reduce the choice to just a few options. Delegate.
A clear example: Lady Gaga concert tickets. Instead of spending two hours in a virtual queue and ending up with nothing, you send your AI agent to fight for you. Efficient? Yes.
But this example highlights four key, highly specific variables that prevent generalization:
- Scarcity (few units, high demand)
- Urgency (purchase must happen now)
- Cost, referring to the effort and time the buyer must invest to obtain the product
- Predictability of the delivered product. Let’s remember that in this case, the delivered product is an experience (the show itself), to which layers of value are added: from where (seat location) and how (standard, VIP) we will enjoy it. The ticket simply unlocks access
Buying access to an event is one thing; buying wine, medical treatment, or insurance is another. In these cases, scarcity and urgency are very different, and predictability varies. Will we accept what a machine decides, or will we need to validate it ourselves to feel we made the decision?
Technology or Trust?
Today, over 51% of online content is generated by machines. That includes most of the so-called “digital gurus” discussing these trends—they don’t even write their own posts.
You can tell: identical structure, neutral tone, ending with a question like “What do you think?” followed by “I’ll read your comments.” Otherwise, it would seem rude and confirm there was no real intent to spark discussion. In the public square, there were already people on cardboard boxes shouting ideas and concepts (in the Wild West, they were miracle potions) without expecting much audience feedback.
AI will integrate into digital commerce. That has already happened. Thanks, gurus. The dilemma will arise when we start questioning its credibility, considering that not all product categories have the same peculiarities in the full purchase process—which we know is not just “going through checkout.”
Not Everyone Shops the Same: Ecommerce Will Have to Coexist in Multiple Models
Digital commerce has always been a battle against friction. It started by removing barriers (free returns were one driver), but in eliminating friction, we risk losing judgment as well.
Last but not least: can we create ecommerce solutions tailored to different generational profiles?
Boomers, Gen X, Z, Millennials… each has a distinct process and mindset in their purchase decisions, or at least specific peculiarities. And beware of ignoring the “dynamic view”: patterns shift and slide even within the same generation.
