Who's Doing Your Shopping? The Rise of AI Agents

[00:00:00] I as Christem am totally okay to have an agent go out if I give it the guardrails and say, make sure that my paper towels and my dish soap and my toilet paper every month comes in and everything stays under $20 or whatever that price limit is. Hello and welcome to the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1 US, a podcast in which we explore the mind-bending world of global supply chains, covering topics such as automation, innovation, unique

[00:00:29] identity and more. I'm your co-host Reed. And I'm Liz. And welcome to the show. Kristen Rogers from Plug and Play and I just had a conversation about how AI is helping brands and retailers, even sports venues and players, give customers and fans these amazing experiences. It blew my mind at all of the opportunities that this is presenting. Kristen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Liz. I'm so excited to be here.

[00:00:57] I am so excited as well. Excited as a term that Reed and I use a lot, but this one for me is especially exciting because you are going to talk to us about something we keep hearing, but I know I need to be educated on. So let's first start. Share a little bit about your background and your role at Plug and Play. Yeah. So I'm Kristen Rogers again. I am the director of brand retail, marketing and advertising

[00:01:23] and sports tech at Plug and Play. So I oversee three different pillars of our ecosystem. Plug and Play, for those that do not know, we are often referred to as the ultimate innovation platform, which is just a very fancy way of saying that we do three things. First and foremost, we are venture capital. In fact, we're considered the most active VC in the world, not by size of check, but by number of checks. We do about 250 checks per year. Sometimes joke that we are plug and pray. We like to make a lot of small bets, but they've hit well for us.

[00:01:50] Second pillar, we do a lot of corporate innovation. So I have the honor of working with over 550 of the largest corporates in the world. Thank all of the Fortune 500 companies as an extension of their innovation arm. And then finally, we do run accelerator programs. So twice a year, we have all of our incredible partners across the different verticals. Again, I look at retail and marketing. I look at sports tech. They sit side by side and they give us focus

[00:02:16] areas. We put together a list of emerging technologies and startups that we think that can help quite literally plug and play into their ecosystem to help solve a problem. And we help accelerate them. So three main pieces of our business, but at the end of the day, Liz, I say, I'm just a dot connector. I just love being that matchmaker, talking with corporations, talking with other VC folks and talking with startups and seeing where I can help facilitate best conversations and networking at the intersection. It's really, really cool. And I want you to tell me what

[00:02:45] sports tech is. And maybe in this next kind of question, we can get into that because it sounds, I think I know what it is, but maybe I don't. So you have a unique view, it sounds like, across the brands and the retailers and startups and emerging technology. And then VC is right, who have the money. What trends are you most excited about right now? Yeah, I definitely will get into the trends and on the retail side. And to answer your question

[00:03:13] about sports tech as well, too, first Liz. So I've always viewed sports tech in this kind of golden triangle, this intersection of player health and performance technologies, right? So anything that can help a athlete train better on the field, decrease their recovery time when they're off the court. We then look at fan engagement technologies, which fit really well into marketing and advertising. So a lot of the ways that you're engaging with your fan are how brands and retailers also engage with their consumer. And then we have stadium technologies as well, too, which going into a

[00:03:43] stadium is a lot like going into a retail store, right? So we feel a lot of synergies on the sports side with the fan engagement and the stadium technologies, like we do with our brands and retailers. So I can't tell you how many teams and leagues I talk to on a daily basis and show them technologies that we have implemented with our luxury brands, clothing, apparel, big box, QSR, quick service restaurant, right? And a lot of that technology can also fit pretty seamlessly

[00:04:10] into a sports team or league. So let's dig in on that. So the trends that we're seeing right now, what I think is so interesting, Liz, when Plug & Play first started its corporate innovation practice, it was 2013. And my boss, our CRO, Michael Olmsted, was approached by Kohl's, PVH, and TJX, so three partners of Plug & Play. And at the time, we were just an incubator, we just had a massive building in Silicon Valley where startups were able to come in and to grow.

[00:04:37] And then we would also write a check into them as well, too. So kind of this like rent for equity play. But in 2013, Amazon was becoming the e-commerce giant that we know and love. And those three brands that I mentioned came to Mike and said, hey, you've got some great startups in your office. Like, can we get access to them? And if so, can you put together a themed accelerator so that we can try to catch up to Amazon and what they're building in the e-com space? So since then,

[00:05:03] we've seen a few different waves of commerce. So first it was e-commerce, and then it was mobile commerce, right? Download your favorite brand's app, your retailer's app. Then it became social commerce. And then from there, we now see agenda commerce. So right now, Liz, we see a really high sense of urgency among brands from the marketing perspective and retailers from the commerce perspective because where and in fact, who is shopping for us has changed drastically in the

[00:05:33] last two years, but even in the last two months, because it is constantly changing in this age of AI. Can you help me just what is agenda commerce? Let's like level set what that is. Yeah. So if I go back to those four waves of commerce, right? E-commerce, shopping online, mobile commerce, shopping on a mobile app, social commerce, shopping on TikTok shop, very likely.

[00:05:57] Agentic commerce is yes, shopping through an LLM, right? You go to Chachabiti, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude to do your shopping. But more than anything, Liz, it's not necessarily where you're shopping, but it's who is shopping for you. So agentic commerce is also this concept that I, as Kristen, can build an agent that is going to act on my behalf and go out and buy products for me. So

[00:06:24] no longer is it where you're shopping, it is who you're shopping here. And I just think it's so interesting because we then have this question of, you know, are consumers actually building their own agents to have, you know, to shop on your behalf? And I'll call this out, Liz, in September of 2025. So basically this time last year, OpenAI launched this instant checkout feature. So I could

[00:06:49] go into Chachabiti and I could say, you know, like find me a couch that's under a hundred dollars. And it could find me this couch that's under a hundred dollars. And I could instantly check out right there. That framework was built, that agentic commerce framework was built so that I can also have my agent go out and make those purchases for me. That was 2025, March of 2026, not even six months later. We saw OpenAI totally roll it back at this point because we, as the consumers were not ready.

[00:07:18] We've now seen a few different iterations, but the thought of agentic commerce, is an agent going to buy on your behalf? The framework is there. The tech is there. We're waiting for the consumer to catch up at this point as well. I'm assuming because the consumer isn't ready for something, something to buy a good without them involved. Yes, exactly right, Liz. So I look at this in two different buckets. I look at this as a functional

[00:07:43] purchase and I look at an emotional purchase. So I, as Kristen, am totally okay to have an agent go out. If I give it the guardrails and say, make sure that my paper towels and my dish soap and, you know, like my toilet paper every month comes in and everything stays under like $20 or whatever that price limit it is. I don't care where you're buying it from, right? You can go source the best price. That's what LLMs are great at, right? They can go source it from a Walmart, from a Target,

[00:08:11] from a, from a Sam's Club, wherever I'm getting that best price in those guardrails. I'm okay with those functional purchases being done without a human in the loop, without me in the loop. But when it comes to the emotional purchases, right? I talk about that couch. Even if I can find a couch under, you know, $500, I still don't need to make sure it fits my aesthetic. It can fit in my apartment, right? It has the right dimensions. It can fit through the door as I'm trying to have

[00:08:37] the movers come in as well too. So we talk about, you know, what we're willing to let go and what we're not willing to let go. And so that functional versus emotional is a good distinction to make. It makes so much sense to me too, because if it can get the toilet paper, the paper towels without thinking about it, that's amazing. I want to know what that black sweater may feel like, or what the customer reviews are before pressing the button to purchase. But I think it's so cool.

[00:09:06] It takes all that time and lets you do more value add things. It's so cool. When the brands are starting to think about the agentic commerce, what should they be thinking about when it comes to the consumer engagement part of this? Yeah, Liz, that's a great question. The first piece is, are you machine readable? So if you're a brand or a retailer, it's not just humans that are going to search on your

[00:09:31] website anymore to look for those specific SKUs. It's an agent that's also going to look for this information, right? We have seen a big shift now. We know that when it comes to product discovery and comparison and search, we're not doing that anymore on traditional Google search, right? We're doing this through ChatGPT, through perplexity, through pod. I am asking this LLM, give me the best recommendations for a black sweater under $100, right? And it's sourcing that. But you need to

[00:10:00] make sure that you as a brand or a retailer, that black sweater on your website has an emotional description. So I as a human can go to your website and I want to buy that sweater, but then my agent also goes there and wants to buy that sweater. And what's so interesting, Liz, is we've seen this shift now from the days of SEO or search engine optimization to GEO or generative engine optimization. So new acronym, new way that teams and marketing teams have to engage. But I'll give you a few stats

[00:10:27] here to show you just how much new data we're unlocking with GEO. If you look at a traditional Google keyword search, it's usually about three words, right? It's very, very succinct. If you look at a average prompt within ChatGPT, it's about 26 words. So now all you have is this, you have brand new contextual information about your consumer. And as a marketing team, you want to make sure that your brand is going to come up every single time that that prompt gets put into a different LLM.

[00:10:56] But then as a marketer, you also want to take all that contextual data and make sense of it so you can better target your consumer as well too. I can only imagine how the brands are evolving in that different skill set that people need to employ. It's no longer just about your app. It's like your app needs to work. And so just layering on this additional technology, but then additional insights that they can take must be huge. This is

[00:11:25] making my head hurt a little in a good way, in a good way. On the flip side, thinking about the consumers. So you've got the brands and they need to make it machine readable, which is crazy. And then all that information. I know I even as a consumer are relying on the agents to discover and evaluate and purchase these products. How is that going to change the way that consumers are building relationships overall? Like how do they differentiate them? Yes, they can be found. Yeah.

[00:11:53] But how do they lean into that emotional experience? Yeah. Great call, Liz. So traditional website designs are going to matter less if AI agents are fetching that raw product data directly. So on that flip side, if you are a brand, you still want to create the best experience for your consumer when they're going to your website. And the way to do that is through building your own agent or building an AI storefront that gives your consumers this best

[00:12:20] experience. So AI storefront, it's this idea that no longer are we going to rely on keyword search in a search bar on a brand or retailer's website, right? Again, we are now accustomed to going into Gemini or chat or Claude and not giving that keyword search, right? We want to say like, show me, we talked about the US Open, right? I'm actually in New York City right now. I could say, you know, show me a dress for the US Open. That's naturally how I want to prompt into query now. So if I'm going to a

[00:12:49] brand's website, I want to say, show me US Open dresses. And I want that contextual layer to then populate in the options that you give me. So that's that idea of creating a custom and a really personalized AI storefront. We talk about these, you know, billions of unstructured data points that we now have as we're giving this contextual queries. And so it's this layer of personalization that each brand and retailer can give to consumers that's going to create the best experience for them possible,

[00:13:18] right? You want that search and that discovery and that price comparison to happen on an LLM. But if you're a brand, a lot of brands still want that ultimate purchasing decision to be made on your website, in your mobile app or through social commerce. And so to that point, you want to make sure that that post purchase and experience focus is still top of mind, the customer service, the product quality, the shipping options, buy now, pay later, all of that is still owned by the brand

[00:13:45] so that you are still owning your consumer at the end of the day. So you're going to love what I got from that. So instead of putting in, I'm going back to the very beginning of what you said, instead of putting in, I want a cute dress, I want a cute floral dress for the US Open or not even for the US Open, but I want a cute floral dress. Now I can go and I say, I want a dress for the US Open or I want a dress for whatever event. And it's going to know

[00:14:11] what's appropriate or what it's, which is crazy because it just opens up so many different alternatives for brands to serve. That is not a pun I meant to do with tennis, but just serve up these things and potentially do additional pricing or whatever accessories, right? Am I thinking about that right? It's not just the dress, but it's all the other things.

[00:14:36] Yes. You definitely are. Yeah. Again, we as consumers expect hyper personalization, right? We know that in this world, we have given a lot of data over to these brands and retailers. So if we've given you that data, we want you to know how to best target us. And so yes, if it knows that I'm in New York City and I'm in Queens at the US Open, right? And I'm searching for this specific dress, it should also know to target me with maybe a handheld fan, you know, because it's so hot out here or an

[00:15:05] umbrella because it's been rainy at the open as well too. Like it should have and take all this contextual information and serve you personalized recommendations. There is this thought when it came to the age of e-commerce that you are no longer going to have those kind of awe and joy and delight, those kind of like last minute purchases, like where you have the gum and the candy at the grocery store. But now you have all this contextual data, you can still service your consumer with those kind

[00:15:32] of awe and delight moments just in a different fashion. Absolutely. A snack. Yeah. I mean, anything like that's, it's really cool. Band-aids for your feet because that's going to hurt. That's real. It's really cool. I can't wait to like learn more and lean into this just as a consumer too. I have teenagers and I know that this is happening from their perspective, not just the TikTok shop, right? They did that. But then leaning into all this other stuff, especially with homecoming season,

[00:15:58] it's crazy. I think about all of the organizations that you're lucky enough to work from or work with, especially for me, like the sports team and league, it's really cool. What stands out to you about how they're thinking about loyalty and engagement and really most importantly, how they understand the audience that they're serving all this up to? It's a great question, Liz. We are seeing so many

[00:16:26] teams really expand what their IP looks like. So for example, if you are, you are no longer just a baseball team, right? You are also owning the media network. You are owning likely the sport tainment district where you can buy your dinner and your snacks and your drinks ahead of time as well too. And so now if you are a team, you can own the fan journey at every single point, right? You want to make sure that they're within this like walled garden that you're building, right? So that I can go

[00:16:55] to my team's app. It will give me push notifications for maybe discounts that are happening at the team store. As soon as I get to the sport tainment district, it can tell me about maybe a specialty cocktail that is being offered by a sponsor at one of the local bars there as well too. And then it gives me wayfinding to be able to best navigate. So if it knows that I am bringing friends and we want to go to a specific part of the stadium, or if it's a family that's coming in and they know that they

[00:17:24] want to go to the like the mascot meet and greet ahead of the game, right? You want to be able to again, take all this personalized information and own the journey from end to end. No longer is it just we want to get you in and out of the stadium. It's we want to provide you with the best possible experience that starts way before you even step foot into the arena. And from there, it's then taking that journey post game as well too, right? It is how do sponsors continue to engage with fans?

[00:17:53] We see this lot in basketball games, right? It's, you know, you miss the free throws or the opposing team misses the free throws and you get some sort of like burger or hot dog or taco or something after the game as well too. It's continuing to create that sense of loyalty with your fan from end to end. So we're just seeing that IP grow. And so you're seeing the opportunities for engagement really span the entire fan lifecycle instead of just a singular moment. So your role would be to bring together, as you talked about earlier, like those triangles,

[00:18:23] right? But the brands and the stadiums, because I'm sure that this is not their expertise necessarily is to have a one step, like a whole beginning to end experience. And then the opportunities and those new, there's new things. Like I understand going to the mascot, right? As a family, but I'm sure there's things that organizations haven't even thought of and creatively be able to bring in to

[00:18:49] that. Yeah. When you think about a trend, as you look ahead into the future, what are you really thinking that brands and organizations as a whole should be paying attention to today? So they're not behind in six months or a year? Yeah. One of my favorite trends that I'm seeing right now is this idea of digital twins or synthetic data for consumer or fan insights. So we talk about, again, all these unstructured data points

[00:19:15] that you now have about fans specifically or about consumers specifically. So it's this idea of companies being able to create digital twins of your consumers so that you can figure out how specific segments of your audience are going to react to major decisions. And that can be marketing campaigns, that can be new product development, that can be new logo or design opportunities as well too. If you're a sport team or league, you could even ask, how are they going to respond to this new player

[00:19:44] that we're looking to draft? It really is the best use case for AI because it's allowing you to make smarter decisions faster. There's a ton of companies in this space. There's one that I love rehearsals that we've been working with. They're based here in New York City and the team is coming from Google DeepMind. And so you're seeing a lot of folks build in this space because this is kind of the idea of what LLMs were based on for so long. But now marketing teams have something where they're

[00:20:11] able to figure out how their audience is going to react in a much more simple and sometimes cheaper way than having to do those outdated surveys that are, we know that you're maybe not going to get the most accurate information from consumers through those as well too. So now you can better understand your consumer and in large part, it's because of this information we've given throughout LLMs. The heartache that I know brands have gone through in the past when they make bad decisions.

[00:20:36] And if you can get ahead of that and tweak as you go, I mean, that can be game changing. I think that's really, really cool. Exactly. And knowing exactly what segments, right, that you're wanting to target. So it's not just, hey, if I'm a sport team, right? How are my fans going to react to this new marketing event that we're putting on? No, you can say, how are my Gen Z female fans going to respond? How are fans that

[00:21:03] are from a specific demographic, how are they going to respond? So you can really hyper segment it so that you can better decide on big decisions, but then also smaller decisions so that you can create that personalized experience for each one of your specific fan bases as well. Is it big brother, a little or no? Like, should we be worrying as the normal human being that this is a little big brother or trust? I think we've all gotten past, or at least I have gotten past the point to know that every single

[00:21:31] time I'm going onto a website, I'm saying something about like, I have to allow the essential cookies or whatever is being shown my way. Right. So I think we know that our data is not, you know, personal, personal data, but data about me, who I am as Kristen Rogers is out there. So yes, I am okay. As long as you are giving me a personalized experience that is meaningful to me. I do think obviously there's a little big brother. We're here talking about like US open tickets. I

[00:21:59] guarantee you the second I go to my socials, it's going to be here's ads for US open tickets. That's a little big brother eat to me, but I think we've gone past the point where it's not nascent anymore. We expect that kind of personal vision. Yep. Especially as you talk about delighting the customer. When you have that, oh, wow, that's really what I needed. How did you know that? That's a little freaky, but indeed I'm going to not buy that or use that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:24] It's really cool. So we're running out of time. There are two questions that we ask our guests as we wrap up. I'm really looking forward to hearing what you're going to say about this first one, either in your personal or professional life. What is your favorite technology that you're using right now? I would say any AI note taking app, but Granola specifically, I love it's my favorite. So I, as I mentioned, Liz, I'm here in New York city right now. I am running all over the

[00:22:51] city between meetings that are virtual, that are in person, coffee meetings, dinner meetings, lunch meetings, what have you. And then I'm on my phone, my laptop, like catching up with my team that's back in Silicon Valley. It's so nice for me to have an AI note taking agent that can take all my notes for me. And then I can sort through after and make sure that I'm not missing anything when it comes to the follow-ups or the next steps, right? My team knows that I've been insanely busy with meetings this week. And so for me to be able to catch up with them for two seconds and know,

[00:23:19] Hey, what do I still owe? Like my ventures team, what do I still owe my partnerships team? It's great for me to have everything synthesized into one place that I can then go back and ask questions to, and I can put together a to-do list for me. So when I get on the plane and head home, everything will already be done for me. That's really, really cool. Having that peace of mind. So it's not just the, it's not just the things that it's doing, but the peace of mind that you didn't forget anything and that you have a backup. Exactly. Yes. It is a great safety net.

[00:23:48] I'm going to look into that because I'm assuming you can use it in your personal life too. Yeah, exactly. No question. And you can also use it on your phone, not to nerd out for a second. So I can have it on my laptop, but I can have it on my phone. So if I am having a coffee meeting, I can just have it right here and it will take notes for me after. So if I am meeting with some, a new startup and I know that I want to make certain introductions for them, I will have told them, Hey, I want to introduce you to XYZ. Granola will pull that for me after. So I can remember

[00:24:16] exactly who I wanted to introduce them to. That's really cool. That's very, it's very helpful. Mind it. Peace of mind I think is huge. It's huge. Okay. Last question. What is something you would like to learn about in the near future? I have done some high level vibe coding, which I really love, right? I think everyone in Silicon Valley has definitely vibe coded an app or two at this point. And I truly believe that everyone should, because I think it gives you a really

[00:24:42] great perspective on how you should be prompting and also how easy it is to build something so bespoke within the age of AI right now. So I use lovable for a lot of it. If you haven't used it, I highly recommend. I would love to dig into that a little bit more. I think I've been doing a few exercises for kind of like hypothetical apps that I would like to see within the sports tech and the retail space to experience what a lot of the startups that I work with are going through.

[00:25:10] But I'd like to create something super bespoke for me, almost my own personal agent that can help take care of a lot of my day-to-day drudgery so that I can focus and get time back to focus on more important things. That's really cool. Those are two things that I had not been aware of is the granola and the lovable. And I think that as we, as just, I mean, I am not technical, but obviously technology is very much, everybody's leaning into it. And so learning about that. And then I think

[00:25:39] you're not as scared too of the big brother, right? You're giving it the data, things like that. So I'm going to look into that too, because I think it just helps. And maybe I can talk to my kids a little bit more educated. So they won't think I'm done. That's whatever. That's the great part about vibe coding though, is that you don't have to have a technical background. Like Liz, I have a background in journalism and broadcasting. I don't have a background in engineering by any stretch of the imagination. Math and I are not super great friends. So

[00:26:07] being able to do more prompt engineering, that I really like. That is awesome. That is awesome. This has been such a fun conversation. Thank you. Thank you for doing this when you're on the road. I know that is not particularly easy. My eyes have been opened around agentic commerce and all of the different data points, how consumers are thinking about it, and maybe not thinking about it, but being served up that information and how brands and retailers are leaning into that. So Kristen, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Liz. It was a pleasure talking with you. Thanks.

[00:26:37] Thank you for joining the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1US. If you enjoyed today's show, you can subscribe to our feed or explore more great episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to share and follow us on social media. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.