The way customers shop is changing faster than most organisations are prepared to admit. The era of channel-based marketing — built on the assumption that reaching people through the right platform at the right time is enough — is ending. What is replacing it is something fundamentally different: a world where AI agents act as persistent digital concierges, handling discovery, personalisation, and purchase on behalf of consumers who have more money than time.
This is the central thesis of VTEX's new white paper, The Agentic Era of Commerce (Download here), produced from direct reporting at VTEX Experience and VTEX DAY 2026 in São Paulo — one of the largest enterprise commerce events in the world.
Why This Shift Matters Now
For over a decade, enterprise brands have structured their digital investment around two dominant platforms. That duopoly is fracturing. As AI-powered search assistants — Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity — reshape how consumers discover products, the traffic that once flowed predictably through Meta and Google is redistributing across dozens of channels simultaneously.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 60% of brands will use agentic AI to deliver one-to-one interactions at scale. The window for early-mover advantage is open — but it will not stay open indefinitely.
What the White Paper Covers
The paper synthesizes six interconnected themes drawn from VTEX's product announcements, leadership sessions, and third-party perspectives from executives at IBM, Decathlon, Delta Cafes, Lindt and Sprungli, and AWS.
| Theme | What You Will Learn |
|---|---|
| The Concierge Economy | Why consumer attention is now the scarcest resource, and how brands must shift from broadcasting to conversing |
| VTEX Vision 2026 | The five-pillar AI-Native Operating System — and how the VTEX AI Workspace is reducing 100-person operations to 20 |
| The Rise of the Unified Platform | Why fragmented best-of-breed stacks became a liability, illustrated by the Decathlon omnichannel case study |
| Brazilian Engineering | How Brazil is repositioning as the world's premier technology exporter — and why it matters for global enterprise infrastructure |
| Leadership and the Long Game | The cultural shifts required to navigate the AI era, including the irreplaceable role of human ingenuity |
| The Market Context | Analyst validation from Gartner and IDC, and the business case in measurable numbers |
The Numbers That Define the Opportunity
The white paper is grounded in real results, not projections. Among the data points documented:
- 85% drop in customer service calls through AI deflection
- 46% sales conversion growth reported by Grupo Boticario after deploying an AI shopping assistant across 4,000 stores
- 97.7% subscription retention rate across VTEX's 2,200 enterprise clients
- 2 hours saved per manager per week by replacing manual reporting with an AI agent, as demonstrated by an AWS executive at VTEX DAY
These are not pilot results. They are live deployments at enterprise scale.
Who This Is Written For
This white paper was written for CIOs, CEOs, and senior commerce leaders responsible for making the infrastructure decisions that will define their organizations' competitive positions over the next decade. It does not assume a technical background — it assumes a strategic one.
If you are evaluating your commerce platform, planning your AI roadmap, or trying to understand what the shift from channel-based to agentic commerce actually means for your business, this paper gives you the clearest available picture of where the market is heading and what the leading organizations are doing about it today.
Download the full white paper below to access the complete analysis, all six chapters, and the strategic framework VTEX is using to help enterprise brands navigate the agentic era of commerce.
