From Browsing to Buying: How AI Agents Will Reshape E-commerce

AI agents are starting to shop on behalf of consumers, and that changes everything about how e-commerce works.

This episode features Brent MacKinnon from WooCommerce (Product Marketing and Developer Advocacy), unpacking agentic commerce and MCP (Model Context Protocol), the layer that lets AI agents read product data, check inventory, compare pricing, and actually complete purchases.

Topics covered:

→ What agentic commerce actually means and why it’s not five years away
→ How MCP lets AI agents take action, not just surface information
→ Why the customer journey is shifting from browsing to intent-driven buying
→ What happens to websites when they stop being the storefront and start being the backend
→ Why clean, structured product data might be the biggest asset going forward
→ Who ends up owning the customer relationship if platforms become the interface
→ What margins, brand loyalty, and discovery look like in an agent-driven world
→ Three practical moves store owners should make in the next 90 days
→ Whether smaller brands actually have a shot at competing here

For anyone running a WooCommerce store or working in e-commerce, this is one of those conversations worth the full listen. The shift toward agents doing the buying is already underway.