As retailers prepare for next year, they acknowledge that convenience has evolved from a value proposition to a structural shift in how all of retail operates.

We asked leaders across retail media, digital identity, payments, mobility, and connected commerce, and they agreed that convenience will continue to change throughout the next year as expectations shift and AI eliminates friction.

Industry leaders warn that retailers who fail to keep pace will feel the impact not just in sales, but in visibility, trust, and loyalty.

Frictionless commerce becomes the industry’s organizing principle

The clearest throughline across experts is the belief that “frictionless” will define 2026 retail strategy.

Adam Skinner, managing director of unified retail media at Epsilon, said the shift is fundamental.

"The word that will define retail in 2026 is 'Frictionless,'" he said. "By then, AI agents will remove cognitive load from shopping, automating product discovery and comparison. Retailers will differentiate not on just assortment, but on ease of transaction and personalized experience."

This move toward AI-orchestrated shopping repositions convenience from a feature to a competitive necessity. Next year, experts say brands will increasingly invest in technologies and networks that eliminate tiny hassles.

"Consumers will reward brands that eliminate micro-friction, not just price, not just convenience, but overall effortlessness achieved through automated, personalized commerce," said Skinner.

For retailers, the battleground is no longer selection or price, it’s the removal of steps consumers never wanted to take.

AI agents become gatekeepers of trust and brand visibility

If 2025 was the year of AI experimentation, 2026 marks a shift toward AI as a controlling layer between retailers and consumers.

According to Tom Burke, CEO of AtData, the true disruption of AI's convenience will be identity and trust.

Burke warns that retailers are losing sight of who their customers are as identities fragment across devices, accounts, and privacy layers. But his larger caution reframes AI’s role in the commerce ecosystem entirely:

“Everyone sees AI agents as a convenience feature. What they’re missing is that AI agents are becoming the new gatekeepers of trust," he said. "The question isn’t ‘How will brands use AI?’ It’s ‘How will AI decide which brands matter?’”

In 2026, AI determines credibility, relevance, and brand access. Retailers and marketers must build for a world where visibility is algorithmic, not just guaranteed.

The last mile of convenience

Industry leaders say convenience now starts before shoppers even arrive.

Scott Booker, General Manager of Parking at Arrive, highlights that access logistics, once considered external to retail strategy, have now become core to the convenience mandate.

“A major barrier to shopping is oftentimes the transportation planning it takes… Agentic AI can now manage the full transportation experience," he said. "This removes the final layer of friction, making the retail destination reliably accessible.”

Booker said younger consumers are driving this change.

“Millennials and Gen Z are the age groups most likely to pay for convenience: 79% and 70%, respectively, agree or strongly agree," he said.

Effortless payments and connected experiences

While automation makes shopping easier, some experts believe the most important shift in 2026 is the combination of effortlessness and trust, particularly in payments and cross-channel personalization.

Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard, frames agentic AI as a path to invisible transactions.

“In 2026, agentic AI will continue to permeate e-commerce… anticipating needs, streamlining checkout, and embedding security so consumers don’t need to type in their card details," he said.

But Fourez stresses that effortless can only scale if consumers believe the system is secure, compliant, and transparent.

“Retail in the age of agentic will remove barriers between intent, discovery and purchase—but effortless must also mean trusted," he said.

In physical retail, David McIntosh, chief connected stores officer at Instacart, highlights how AI-driven assistance changes in-aisle expectations:

“Conversational AI assistants… will make it easier to build weekly meal plans, help customers break out of their shopping autopilot… and produce real-time reminders in-store so they don’t miss anything on their list," he said.

However, McIntosh cautions that retailers must strengthen their data infrastructure to deliver the promise of true personalization.

“True personalization requires connecting data and behavior across the full customer journey," he said. "Retailers who invest now will be best positioned to unlock deeper personalization and long-term loyalty."

Convenience may remove friction, but trust and data integration determine whether consumers stick with the experience.

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.

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