Saurabh Vijayvergia & Bryan McCarthy from Deloitte on Trust, Catalogs, and the Real Agentic Commerce Stack
There’s a fundamental difference between adding AI to today’s ecommerce workflows and re-architecting commerce for an agent-driven world.
In this episode, we start with Deloitte’s Agentic Commerce paper and quickly fan out into what’s changed since its release. If you’re trying to separate signal from noise in the rush toward AI-powered shopping, this conversation grounds Agentic Commerce in real systems, real economics, and real decisions retailers need to make now.
Highlights
- Why Agentic Commerce is a paradigm shift, not a bundle of AI features
- The evolution from SEO → GEO → ACO, and why GEO is just a waypoint
- The two biggest misconceptions Deloitte is hearing from retailers and brands
- Why structured product + data catalogs are the no-regret investment
- The real question execs keep asking: Where do we start? (and what’s measurable)
- The “Acommerce ecosystem”: orchestrators + specialized “nano agents”
- Trust, security, returns, customer service, and why this can’t be a side project
- Forecasts for how big agentic commerce gets, and why the point is: it moves the needle
Agentic commerce is becoming a new channel with new unit economics, and the brands and retailers that get their product truth, governance, and trust foundations right now will be the ones that win when agents become the default interface.
02:10 — The paper: Agentic Commerce: Redefining Retail Economics
03:55 — ACO + the SEO/GEO conversation
04:11 — VJ’s background: SAP → Deloitte, retail AI intersection
05:50 — Bryan’s background: supply chain → strategy → consulting
07:49 — “Traditional AI” vs GenAI in retail
09:38 — Why Deloitte wrote the paper (and why GEO isn’t the endpoint)
11:49 — Deloitte’s definition: why it’s a journey, not a switch
13:33 — NRF vibe check + what’s changed since December
14:27 — Common misconceptions (and what leaders miss end-to-end)
16:14 — The questions execs are asking: where to start + ROI
18:03 — Why this could be a golden age of storytelling + loyalty
21:06 — The no-regret starting point: catalogs + structured data
21:34 — Org design + governance + democratizing AI usage
23:15 — CFO-ready thinking: measuring value by channel
26:12 — Zero-click pressure + “what are you doing about it?”
28:31 — Balanced portfolio: fast wins vs complex upside
30:32 — The core distinction, again: AI add-ons vs agentic redesign
31:18 — Do we still need websites? (channels vs replacement)
33:17 — Deloitte’s role: advise, build, operate
37:29 — “Acommerce” + ecosystems of nano agents
41:31 — Protocols + UCP + what changes next
42:50 — Meta, OpenAI, Google: where this is headed
46:58 — 2030 forecasts: conservative vs aggressive cases
50:02 — Where to follow Saurabh's podcast: The Retail Tales
👉 Connect with Saurabh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/svijayvergia/
👉 Connect with Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancmccarthy/
👉 Learn more about Deloitte: https://www.deloitte.com/us/en.html
Check out the materials we discuss:
🔗 Agentic Commerce: Redefining Retail Economic
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