What Every Retailer Can Learn from the Value Apparel Shopper with Rainbow Apparel | Reimagining Retail

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss how technology has changed the way Rainbow's customers research, compare, and ultimately make purchasing decisions; what the retailer has learned about serving customers that higher-end, luxury, and mainstream retailers could benefit from; and why "every AI experiment designed to replace a person failed, while every experiment designed to make a talented person better succeeded."

Tune in to hear the discussion featuring Vice President of Content and host Suzy Davidkhanian, Principal Analyst Zak Stambor, and David Cost, Chief Digital Officer at Rainbow Apparel.

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Episode Transcript:

Suzy Davidkhanian: [00:00:00] When a consumer reaches checkout, they're no longer browsing, they're buying. It's a moment of peak intent, attention, and engagement. That's where Rokt comes in. Rokt helps brands reach customers at the moment that matters most, delivering relevant offers and content that feels like a natural part of the transaction experience, not an interruption.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Learn more at rokt.com. That's R-O-K-T.com

Suzy Davidkhanian: Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, June 10th. Welcome to EMARKETER's weekly retail show, Reimagining Retail, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Rokt. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives, and I'm your host, Suzy Davidkhanian. On today's episode, we're talking about how technology is changing the way consumers shop.

Suzy Davidkhanian: From e-commerce and mobile apps to personalization and AI, technology is really changing the way consumers discover products, evaluate [00:01:00] options, and ultimately make a purchase decision. Joining me today we have podcast regular, Principal Analyst, Zak Stambor. Hey, Zak.

Zak Stambor: Hey, Suzy. Happy to be here.

Suzy Davidkhanian: We're happy to have you.

Suzy Davidkhanian: And a very special guest, David Cost, Chief Digital Officer at Rainbow. Hey, David.

David Cost: Hey, Suzy. Thanks for having me.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Thanks for joining us. Okay, so before we even get started, I thought we could do a very quick speed intro in 30 seconds or le- less. David, tell us, what do you do, in a sentence?

David Cost: So I essentially help Rainbow translate emerging technology into durable competitive, competitive advantage as the chief digital officer.

Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. It's so important, right? Translate technology into what consumers will use. I can't wait to dig in more. Before we do, tell us, you pick: book, podcast, TV show, movie. What's your favorite right now?

David Cost: I mean, my favorite book is a book called Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. Oh. Um, and what it [00:02:00] essentially teaches you is the difference between what's random and what's real.

David Cost: So it's a framework that I use to think through all kinds of problems.

Suzy Davidkhanian: I love this. I'm gonna have to get the book name from you after. Okay, so not every retailer has approached digital transformation in quite the same way. Rainbow has spent years investing in e-commerce, mobile, personalization, AI, all the while serving a high value-conscious customer.

Suzy Davidkhanian: So today we're going to explore what the company has learnt along the way, how technology has changed the consumer decision-making, and what retailers across the industry can take away from those lessons. But before we get started, another before we get started question.

David Cost: Okay.

Suzy Davidkhanian: I'm asking you both, what was the last thing you comp shopped for, and how did you go about it?

Suzy Davidkhanian: David, I'm starting with you.

David Cost: All right, so interesting question to ask me. So I founded one of the first price comparison sites on the internet back in '97. So I've been price com- you know, running price comparison- This is your

Suzy Davidkhanian: thing ...

David Cost: for, for a very, very long time. There isn't [00:03:00] anything I buy that I don't do a price comparison on first.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Uh, Zach, are you all in on price comparison shopping?

Zak Stambor: I 100% comparison shop for everything. I am always eager to get the best price. Um, the, the thing I most recently was doing that with is the most banal product. So I am re- um, I am power washing my pavers in front of my house, and when you do that, you need to get a special type of sand that then you, you put into those pavers.

Zak Stambor: And so I was looking at Lowe's and Home Depot and Menards and various other places, and I, I settled on sand at Menards.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Oh, interesting. It's funny, I think we can have a whole episode on this, right? There is a psychology- ... around looking for the best price and feeling like you won, but today we're gonna really talk much more about Rainbow.

Suzy Davidkhanian: So for, for the listeners who are not quite as [00:04:00] familiar, can you give us a quick overview? What is the business today? Who is the customer that you're serving? What, what, what... Tell us more.

David Cost: So Rainbow's got a big brick-and-mortar footprint. We operate over 850 stores. Those stores are spread across the United States and US territories.

David Cost: We've got a lot of stores also in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. We sell kind of affordable clothing for women and kids. Um, and on the adult side, that's size inclusive, so both junior and plus. Um, and you know, it's in a lot of, um, urban and multiethnic, uh, neighborhoods. Um, you don't tend to find Rainbows in, in big fancy malls.

David Cost: We tend to be in urban places, um, or in malls that would be in, um, um, you know, less traveled areas.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Right. And when you think about, 'cause you are a giant footprint, and you are... It's a bit of a treasure hunt sometimes, your stores- It is ... right? Mm-hmm. So when you think about that, how important is digital to your [00:05:00] business today versus when you started?

David Cost: I don't think we realized when we started what the overlap was between digital and brick-and-mortar, right? That that customer, either before or after she's in the store, has probably visited the website as a pre-shop or as a post-shop. Um, you know, we launched what we call buy online, pick up in store, uh, or ship to store, right?

David Cost: Because of the way Rainbow buys merchandise, we can't really do fulfillment at the local store level.

Zak Stambor: Hmm.

David Cost: But customers, let's say you, you know, again, you're of more modest means. Your building doesn't have a doorman or doesn't have a, a, a guarded package room. So if a package is thrown on the floor and somebody sees it, they're gonna steal it, right?

David Cost: So people need a secure place to be able to pick up their goods. When we made the offer that they could come into the... You know, they could place an online order, we would ship it to whichever Rainbow they wanted where they could come pick it up, um, that's now a third of our business, third of the online [00:06:00] business.

David Cost: Wow. So crazy overlap between digital and brick-and-mortar. I think that's the biggest thing we learned over time that no one really fully appreciated until we launched this, this ship to store function.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Well, and I think it's such an interesting insight, right? You take a minute to look at the data that you have to really better understand who your consumer is and how you can remove a friction point using technology.

Suzy Davidkhanian: So I think sometimes we try and wedge a tech solution into a problem, and it doesn't always work. And in this case, it seems to be very seamless.

David Cost: And I think we also sometimes assume or we jump to the worst conclusion. So most people in this industry today would say the reason for a package not delivered is fraud.

Zak Stambor: Hmm.

David Cost: Okay? And that actually is not the case. I mean, these were literally legitimate people whose packages were stolen. They... It really wasn't their fault. And as soon as we gave them an option where they could securely get the package, our [00:07:00] lost package or our did not, did not receive volume, you know, was cut 80%.

David Cost: So we'd like overnight self-solve the problem with no incentive, right? People just want their stuff when they order it. Um, it had nothing to do with fraud. Yet, you know, for all the kinds of e-commerce events we go to, everybody talks about packages not delivered being fraud, and I think that's just not the case.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Yes. Yes, and I also think we sometimes don't think about, you know, we think about the next shiny object- Mm-hmm ... um, and we don't really think about the consumer has to move arou- move with us, right? It's, it's the technology that supports a new consumer behavior. And I, when I first started EMARKETER, talked a lot about the QR codes, right?

Suzy Davidkhanian: Mm. It's so old, the QR codes. But until we had a need 'cause of COVID, nobody was really using it. And it feels like today there's a lot of that happening, too, where it's more than a technology story. It's the consumer behaviors are changing. And are you seeing that also happen within your customer set? I know, Zach, we talk a lot about [00:08:00] this when it comes to just in general consumer behavior and technology.

David Cost: We've watched, you know, even things like certain digital wallets. It took a long time for Apple Pay to take off. But, like, in the last year, Apple Pay went to a, from a really small percentage to a meaningful percentage. Now, I don't know exactly what triggered it, 'cause Apple Pay's been around for a long time.

David Cost: Mm. But something switched in the consumer that made those, those digital wallets more appealing. So again, you just have to ... We offer things, and then we watch to see, you know, what the, what the customer engages with.

Zak Stambor: Given the slow take-up of some of these technologies, how do you know when to lean in and when to pivot or adjust?

David Cost: I mean, Zach, to be honest, like, we don't know. I mean, you know, we take bets, and we try to take bets that have limited downside if we're wrong, right? So [00:09:00] offering Apple Pay or Google Pay won't really do us any harm. If a customer doesn't use it, then we spent some development time building it. Um, and again, like, in our experience, Apple Pay's up to almost 10% of our tender now.

Zak Stambor: Wow.

David Cost: You know? And Google Pay is, is, you know, I don't know, 1%, one and a half. For some reason, people don't like Google Pay, but they do like Apple Pay, and we're watching it really grow quickly. Could say the same thing about the buy now, pay later services. Um, you know, we started with one, saw what that kind of adoption rate was, um, ran with one vendor for three years, and when the contract was up said, "Okay, maybe we should offer another one."

David Cost: And when we did it, we saw very little cannibalization, and it was another additive piece to the business. So you can really see sometimes, you know, you don't know what customer demand is until you actually take the thing live and, and let people play with it.

Suzy Davidkhanian: And to that point, it feels like often when, [00:10:00] when folks think about value apparel or value consumers, they don't necessarily think about technology or, like, how do you bridge the gap.

Suzy Davidkhanian: What is it that you did, or what did you guys see, or what was some of the first experiments you ran that convinced your colleagues that we really should be investing heavily in digital?

David Cost: I mean, look, I think for, not only for Rainbow, but for the country overall, mobile was the great equalizer.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Mm.

David Cost: Right?

David Cost: When we ... You know, when the only way you could get on the internet was to own a computer or a laptop, that just put it out of the reach of a lot of people. When, um, the iPhone was introduced, and as that technology progressed and got more and more affordable, where literally today, regardless of what your economic status is, you've got a fully internet-capable smartphone.

David Cost: Everyone does now. Like, it's just universal. And that really made access to the internet and online shopping universal. Without that, I'm not [00:11:00] sure it would be relevant to a Rainbow audience, right? Our customer, their sole computing device is that mobile phone.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Mm-hmm.

David Cost: There's no printer. There's no desktop.

David Cost: There's no laptop. There's no tablet. Um, it's all about the phone.

Zak Stambor: Yeah. No, I think the thing that's so interesting about the mobile phone is that you don't necessarily use it in the same way that you use a computer. You know, you use it when you're in transit. You use it when you're standing in line. And so it unlocks different behaviors because you're not just doing one specific behavior.

Zak Stambor: It's all the time. You always have this thing with you.

David Cost: I mean, Zach, the only thing I'd throw out is that, again, for people of a certain- At a certain economic level, it is their only computing device, right? They don't have an alternate. They can't switch from one to another, right? The only piece of computer tech they own is the phone.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah.

David Cost: So for them, everything they do with the online [00:12:00] world happens through that phone. It's a different way of thinking. I mean, I look at my, you know, my 320-somethings, right? And they have the luxury of having multiple devices, but they do everything from the phone. So I think as time goes on, whether it's economic necessity or as the younger generation comes up, I mean, it's like mobile only.

David Cost: It's not even mobile first. Yeah. Mobile's the only thing that seems to matter to anyone.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Which is interesting 'cause we're seeing a lot of, a lot of this dualities of the small screen, right? You work from there if, if that's what your job entails. Mm-hmm. And even if you're s- not even if, but a- store associates also use a mobile device that is usually their phone to help with clienteling.

Suzy Davidkhanian: So it's like your phone is so many things, including being entertained, and making purchases, and learning about sales. And so it really is fascinating. Is there anything that surprised you with your consumer base around how they were using their phone, especially if you think about price comparisons or [00:13:00] other shopping behaviors?

David Cost: I mean, the biggest thing that has kind of surprised us, right, and I think this is another kind of cautionary tale just overall. So if you look at just the United States, about a third of this country has a college degree, two-thirds do not. So let that sink in for a second, right? So the majority of the country does not have a college degree.

David Cost: The average Google query is three words or less. The average ChatGPT query is 32 words. So do we really think that ... And again, this has nothing to do with intelligence, right? This has to do with how comfortable you are typing or writing a lot of text. Do we really think that two-thirds are really comfortable writing 32-word queries?

David Cost: Okay, and are they gonna be- Expert at prompt engineering, right? Mm-hmm. All these things that are necessary to get the most out of the, out of the LLMs. Is that really gonna be a mass market thing? And that's gonna be quite some time. We [00:14:00] actually wanted to answer that question, so we started a post-purchase survey to ask people after they purchased, so we knew these were real online customers, "Do you use ChatGPT?"

David Cost: And we've been at about 25%, so that's like one in four. That hasn't really moved much in the last six months. That means 75% of people don't use an LLM, right? So in our world, right, when we go to e-commerce events, you would swear absolutely everyone s- spends all their life in Chat or Claude or Gemini or whatever the tool of, of their choice is.

David Cost: Um, and we just don't see that in the population overall, and I think that's something that gets missed. So like when we talk about agentic commerce-

Suzy Davidkhanian: Oh, yes ...

David Cost: again, like they're not using, they're, they're not even using AI at a base level.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah.

David Cost: Let- let's not worry about agents. Um- Yes.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Or even like truly end to end, like nobody's g- this group of people is not giving their credit card to an agent who's gonna make a [00:15:00] purchase on their behalf.

Suzy Davidkhanian: But it is interesting, this idea of technology enabling consumers, and in your world it's a little bit differently. That said, your website does really well and it's really, really easy. Like I o- of course went to check it out, and it's very easy to navigate. Are there technological undertones that, you know, we don't have access to?

Suzy Davidkhanian: I mean, AI is not new. We know this. It's been part of the retail landscape for a very long time. It's just new that we're talking about it in such a, a sort of consumer facing lens. Are ... You guys are using some of those tools on the back end though to make it more simple.

David Cost: Definitely use it on the back end.

David Cost: So we use it when we write, um, product titles and product descriptions. We're doing more and more gen AI in terms of generating product photography. Um- Mm. Right? Which I think is the, you know, is gonna be the single biggest impact in the, in the world of e-commerce. Right? I think in e-com we've essentially

David Cost: Everybody knows all the tricks in the [00:16:00] playbook for, for doing conversion rate optimization, right? We've, we've done those, we've done them for years. We've kind of hit a ceiling, right? There's, there's, there's not a whole lot new out there. I think that generative AI is gonna open up a whole new line of attack.

David Cost: So if you think about it, in the e-com world, we sell pictures, right? Because people can't touch and feel the goods. They buy from a picture. So, you know, look, product photography is really expensive and hard. So what happens when we can use gen AI to essentially generate as many variations of product images as we want, right, in literally minutes and for dollars?

David Cost: Um, will we start A/B testing product photography and product detail pages to pick winners from losers, right? What kind of... I'll tell you a simple test we've, we've done to kind of show what the potential is. We send a lot of marketing emails, right? We're sending three marketing emails to, to our customer base every day.[00:17:00]

David Cost: We took a single email and just looked at the hero image, right? So the big image that's at the top of the email. We tried variations. So we used AI to generate variations of that hero image. We changed nothing else. So the subject line, the click-throughs, the messaging, the text- Mm ... everything loo- was the same, just the image changed, and we got material differences in performance from one image to another.

David Cost: So this just shows what the potential of gen AI can do in terms of imaging. When we start applying that en masse to, to product detail pages, where we take multiple versions of, of a product, play them against each other, figure out which ones work and don't work, and then look, take... 'Cause I think people jump, you know.

David Cost: That's gonna be a big enough thing to do. Jump a couple years in the future, you know, an image that works for you may be different than an image that works for Zach, and so now we're gonna do personalized images for each of you when you get to a website. [00:18:00] So you can see this whole bit of being able to customize imaging really in an unlimited way where, you know, your creativity is the only limitation.

David Cost: Budget, times, physical things are not. Um, I think that's gonna be the single biggest change we're gonna see from AI in terms of how it affects e-commerce.

Zak Stambor: I think that's such an interesting point because it's so... It, it runs counter to the hype cycle. The hype cycle is all about, you know, agentic commerce being the next wave, and will this happen?

Zak Stambor: How will this happen? But the reality of it is It's really about-- The best functionality is really about streamlining processes and making people work better, faster, and making things run smoother.

David Cost: I mean, h-here's, here's my analogy that I use to try to level set on agentic. So let's say you've had a cleaning person, and that person's been [00:19:00] cleaning your house or apartment for the last 10 years, right?

David Cost: They're practically a member of the family, right? You let them in your personal space. Um, you know, they're in your house, whatever the frequency is, right? But they're in your house all the time. When they need cleaning supplies, do you hand them your credit card and let them go to the store and buy them?

David Cost: Or do you take the list and go buy the stuff yourself? Nobody hands even their most trusted cleaning person their credit card. So how do people believe that we're gonna give, you know, AI, you know, payment details and let it go buy on our behalf? I, I think between that analogy and then if you look at any of the polling that's done on how the public feels about AI, right?

David Cost: When we look at the general public, not the tech-specific piece, right, the general public is angry and distrusts AI. I just don't see behaviorally how we're getting to the point that we're, you know, gonna hand payment details to something that we [00:20:00] don't really know and understand. Um, so look, I think this agentic thing, I think people are spending a lot of time and resources on something that just isn't-- we're not ready for yet.

Suzy Davidkhanian: We're not ready for as a consumer base, but also businesses aren't necessarily ready for. I, I agree completely. I think, uh, the plot is sometimes lost around the, the best use cases for predictive and generative AI combined, right, to figure out your inventory, merchandise flow. Like, there are so many different ways that we could use it as a business.

Suzy Davidkhanian: And, um, it's not always this end-to-end autonomous because also that, that takes out of the equation shopping is fun for a lot of people, and they want to go into a store, and 80% of sto- sales are in a store. And so, uh, we definitely see eye to eye on this. Um, but you're right. There's, there are a lot of, uh, different narratives around that.

David Cost: Look, I'll leave, I'll leave you with one more thought. I mean, so remember, for a big part of this [00:21:00] country, their only form of electronic payment is their debit card.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Mm.

David Cost: So I don't know if you, you know, to, to just level set how debit cards work in an online world When you present a debit card as a payment type and it needs to see do you have enough funds on that card to be able to pay it, it puts a hold on that, on that account.

David Cost: So it does not taking money out, but it does freeze money in that account. Every person that, that has to live with a debit card only has been through the experience where they have funds frozen that they can't access. The money's in their bank, right? But there's no, there's no electronic mechanism to release that hold Um, in that world, no one with a debit card is gonna give, is gonna give that to an agent to go shop on their behalf.

David Cost: 'Cause if it makes a mistake, then they can't pay rent.

Zak Stambor: Yeah.

David Cost: Um, these are just like the practical things that I think, you know, we've [00:22:00] got engineers that live in a different world, right? That aren't, aren't aware enough about how the majority of the country lives. Um, it's just not gonna work at those levels.

Suzy Davidkhanian: It's also reminiscent of, I mean, I was still working in retail when everyone was talking about like should we think through how do we, um, add stable coin- Mm. -or some kind of Bitcoin- At age ... as a payment mechanism, and everyone was like, "I don't know. Should we just try and make sure that the filtering works before we move onto-" Correct.

Suzy Davidkhanian: these shiny pennies?" I do think sometimes we leap over and forget about the most basic things. I love one of the things you've said about AI experiment design to replace a person is really not a good plan, and it's a failed attempt. Um, but experimenting... And I'm putting words in your mouth, so please correct me if I'm wrong in, in what your true, true sort of, um, thesis is, but the idea of everyday experiments to help people be better at what they do is so much more important.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Um, and that's the same for retail operations.

David Cost: I [00:23:00] mean, look, like we've been surprised. I, I mean, when we did... You know, we've run lots of AI experiments over the last two years. Um, and some of those, I, I mean, again, we wouldn't have done the experiment if we didn't think it was gonna work. Um, you know, like we talked about at the conference, you know, what happened with customer service.

David Cost: This was an AI-based voice agent, right, that was supposed to take over some of the workload of our human agents. Um, and, you know, unfortunately what we found... And again, we used it ourselves to make sure that, that we thought it was up to the task. Um, you know, for things like where's my package or where's my return, an automated agent should be able to answer those things, and if you could do it in voice, it seems pretty...

David Cost: You know, it's sometimes hard to tell that it's not a human on the other end.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Mm-hmm.

David Cost: Yet when we looked at the data, the AI company showed us that they were answering 40% of calls to completion, yet I've got 12 years' worth of customer service data that [00:24:00] showed there was almost no impact on the hours that the agents spent whatsoever or the number of cases they had to handle.

David Cost: So right? If the AI's truly handling 40% of what they touch, then we should see a pretty dramatic reduction in the hours we need from the agents- Mm ... or in the number of cases that they're handling. And again, you would not have known that anything would have been different.

Suzy Davidkhanian: That's interesting. I wonder if it's because they're taking on more complex tasks that take longer to resolve.

David Cost: But then, but then the case, the number of cases wouldn't be, wouldn't be the same. The

Suzy Davidkhanian: same. That's true. Very fair point. The...

David Cost: I mean, look, what I think happens is the person Called in, got the AI agent, went through the process, wasn't satisfied, but they hung up the call

Suzy Davidkhanian: And then called. That's what

David Cost: I did today

David Cost: the AI software said, "Okay, that's to completion," right? They didn't ask, they didn't understand- Yeah, were you happy ... how to ask for an agent, right? And then just called back and went through the other flow instead.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah. [00:25:00] I literally just did that today because the automated, I don't know if it was AI, what- who- whatever it was, the automated system was not working for me, so I hung up and called in.

Suzy Davidkhanian: But you're right, I don't get asked, "Did they complete your request?" Right? They don't know when you hang up if they actually figured it out for you or not. Right. It's really interesting. I, I want to keep talking to you about all of this, especially as it relates to retail, but I am gonna ask you one more question, which is, as you

Suzy Davidkhanian: And you've been in technology and retail for very, for a very long time, and so I feel like you might already be thinking about what's next. So as you think about consumer behavior or technology, what trend are you watching most closely?

David Cost: I mean, look, the big trend I'm watching is when AI usage starts to become more mainstream.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah.

David Cost: Right? So today, you know, we're talking about the upper 25%, right? You know, it's not a mainstream [00:26:00] technology yet. When it hits that point, when we start to see that crossover Then I think, then I think things change. Again, same thing happened with mobile phones, right? When mobile phones, you know, when the first iPhone came out, it was too expensive for, for the vast majority of people, right?

David Cost: And as time went on, it got less and less expensive, and people adopted it more and more. You know, prior to COVID, half of our transactions were still done with paper money, right? Mm-hmm. COVID kind of started to force that even people of more modest means Got more access to electronic forms of, of, of payments.

David Cost: Um, I think I'm watching to see when does that ... when do we make it easier for the average everyday person to be able to interact with AI? Okay? Prompt engineering is not gonna work for the vast majority of Americans, but we're gonna get to a point where they won't have to prompt engineer.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Right. [00:27:00] It's interesting, 'cause we, we have this conversation all the time around, you know, there are a lot of people using the same words to mean different things.

Suzy Davidkhanian: So, like agentic with a capital A, which includes end-to-end, includes LLMs. Like you were saying, 25% of people in your cohort of consumers are using an LLM. But then there are also retailers like Sparky and now Alexa that are trying to force everyone into AI. Mm-hmm. That group, I don't think people understand that they're using AI, right?

Suzy Davidkhanian: The retailer has worked so hard to make it feel like they're participating in the AI conversation, but that you don't have to understand how to prompt or how to do anything. And so it's almost like it's that LLM. H- When people start to go to LLMs more often, it's when we'll go to that next level.

David Cost: Look, I think that's what Google's done, right?

David Cost: I mean, I think Google- Oh, yeah. Almost everybody ... flies, flies under the radar on this, because everybody does a Google search.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah.

David Cost: And that was over a year ago. And they're not realizing that that AI summary at the top is Gemini.

Suzy Davidkhanian: Totally.

David Cost: Um, right? So-

Suzy Davidkhanian: Totally ...

David Cost: look, [00:28:00] that's gonna cross over, and when that crosses over, then another world will open up.

David Cost: Yeah. So that's the big, that's the big thing I'm looking for next.

Zak Stambor: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right, and I, I, I think it's g- a little bit like mobile, where we certainly have a lot of mobile commerce transactions. But mobile also is such a facilitator of transactions that happen in the store and just in various different permutations.

Zak Stambor: And I think, like, that's actually where we're headed in terms of what agentic commerce looks like. It becomes a tool that is a piece of consumer shopping journey. And what that actually looks like, what form it takes, we'll see. It takes some time for these things to shake out.

David Cost: Look, we made mobile phones so intuitive that there was no learning curve to know how to use them, right?

David Cost: It was just so natural. People could instantly start to do it. Mm. When we get LLMs to that stage, now we're gonna have another mass market piece of technology.

Suzy Davidkhanian: That's it. [00:29:00] What a great place to leave it at. Thank you, David, for joining us.

David Cost: Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Suzy Davidkhanian: And thanks, Zach.

Zak Stambor: Yeah. Thanks.

Zak Stambor: This was fun.

Suzy Davidkhanian: And thanks to our listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Please leave a rating or review, and remember to subscribe. I'll see you for more Reimagining Retail next Wednesday. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Rock.

Suzy Davidkhanian: That was so fun. I could really talk about shiny pennies all day

 

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