Netcore Declares Agentic Commerce as the New OS for E-Commerce — Six Structural Shifts Defining 2026

Netcore Cloud Releases Comprehensive Agentic Commerce Report

Ecommerce Growth Trends 2026 Netcore Report Reveals Six Agentic Shifts

Netcore's Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026 reveals how brands like Walmart, Fabindia, and Meesho drive ecommerce growth through execution-focused AI systems.

India-based martech platform leader Netcore Cloud released its "Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026" on February 26, 2026. The report was derived from performance patterns of major retailers and D2C brands served by the company, which counts Walmart, Unilever, Tommy Hilfiger, Crocs, and McDonald's among its 6,500+ brand customers.

The report's core message is clear. While 2025 saw a sharp acceleration in AI adoption, brands that simply increased budgets and added tools failed to achieve results. Only those that redesigned their "execution architecture" delivered meaningful outcomes.

Background and Industry Trends

Interest in agentic commerce has surged rapidly since the second half of 2025. Gartner predicts that by 2030, AI agents will influence 20% of e-commerce transactions, with 33% of enterprises adopting agentic AI by 2028. Gartner also reports that inquiries related to multi-agent systems surged 1,445% from 2024 to 2025.

Meanwhile, Anthropic's 2025 research showed that multi-agent systems outperformed single-agent configurations by 90.2% on complex tasks. Forrester's research in the same year found that 56% of enterprises reported improved scalability after adopting multi-agent approaches.

In this context, Walmart launched its agentic AI strategy in 2025. The company built multiple task-specific agents and connected them as "super agents." Its developer tool "Wibey" manages over 200 agents centrally, while the customer-facing AI shopping assistant "Sparky" serves shoppers.

Netcore's report adds value by systematically organizing these pioneering examples into "structural shifts" applicable across the broader e-commerce industry.

Six Structural Shifts Identified by the Report

The six shifts outlined in Netcore's report explain why performance is diverging sharply between industry leaders and laggards.

Shift 1: Unprofitable e-commerce is a systems problem, not a tools problem. Adding more AI copilot features does not improve profitability. Brands that consolidated fragmented tools into a small number of governed AI agents operating on shared data, with clear ownership tied to profit outcomes, achieved results. This was also a key lesson from Walmart's early experiments.

Shift 2: E-commerce's biggest leak is discovery, not checkout. Traditional e-commerce optimization focused on cart abandonment rates, but the biggest revenue opportunities are actually lost before products are even found. Restaurant Equippers, a commercial kitchen equipment retailer, transformed search and discovery into a conversational AI experience that understands customer intent within one minute. They improved add-to-cart rates and conversions without increasing ad spend.

Shift 3: Fresh markdowns shifted from margin drain to profit lever. In short shelf-life categories, margin erosion was driven more by manual judgment than demand volatility. UK supermarket chain Morrisons replaced human-led markdown rounds with AI-driven store-level decision loops, transforming pricing from a reactive process into a predictable, controllable profit engine.

Shift 4: Language elevated from localization to infrastructure. Indian social commerce leader Meesho deployed vernacular and voice-first customer journeys across browsing, payments, and support layers. This improved first-time user conversions in Tier II+ cities while simultaneously reducing cost-to-serve. The fact that 87% of Meesho's sales in 2025 came from outside India's top 8 cities demonstrates that language support can become operational infrastructure.

Shift 5: Shopping missions explain behavior better than channels. Channel-based reporting masks the true drivers of loyalty and basket size. By organizing strategy around shopping missions — such as "big shop," "top-up," and "need-it-now" — retailers can more effectively optimize assortment, pricing, and journeys. Channels should serve as execution layers rather than planning anchors.

Shift 6: Always-on journeys quietly out-earned campaign calendars. Campaigns excel in visibility and measurability. However, according to the report, the highest incremental profit came from responding to live intent between campaigns. Fabindia, Crocs, and Andamen built AI-driven triggered journeys that treat every browse, cart, and drop-off as recoverable value, outperforming calendar-led approaches without increasing messaging volume.

Impact and Implications for E-Commerce Operators

The biggest question Netcore's report poses is: "Have you changed your execution?" The six shifts call for a redesign of e-commerce's "operating system" itself, not just the adoption of individual AI features.

Start by reviewing your discovery experience. Beyond improving search result pages, you need a mechanism that conversationally understands customer intent and proactively suggests appropriate products. This doesn't necessarily require large-scale investment. As the Restaurant Equippers example shows, changing execution architecture can improve results without increasing ad spend.

Review your campaign-heavy operating model. The "white space" between campaigns is exactly where trigger-based journeys should automatically respond to browsing, cart abandonment, and drop-off signals. Netcore founder Rajesh Jain told MarTechCube that 2026 will be the year AI proves it can deliver results.

Design your AI agent governance model. Rather than proliferating separate AI tools, consider consolidating them into a small number of AI agents unified around shared context and profit metrics. Walmart's decision to build a platform managing over 200 agents reflects the evidence-based insight that agent governance is essential for delivering results.

Summary

Netcore's "Agentic Commerce Shift Report 2026" adds value by attributing the gap of "we adopted AI but didn't get results" — experienced across the e-commerce industry in 2025 — not to insufficient technology or tool count, but to flawed execution architecture. The full report is available at Netcore Cloud's official site.

The e-commerce industry in 2026 is transitioning from the AI agent adoption phase to the "delivering results with AI agents" phase. What separates success from failure is not the volume of campaigns or the number of tools, but the construction of always-on execution systems. Consider starting by examining which of the six shifts represents the largest gap in your own e-commerce operations.