Agentic shopping poses loyalty risk for retailers, VoucherCodes warns
UK retailers risk losing direct relationships with their customers as agentic shopping tools take on more of the purchase journey, according to Jason Gregory, VP of Product at VoucherCodes.co.uk. Gregory argues that while the industry is preparing its technology stacks for autonomous AI-led commerce, it is underestimating the structural damage the shift could do to customer loyalty programmes built around transactional touchpoints.
Research cited in the release, commissioned by Commerce and PayPal and conducted by Logica Research in June 2026, found that almost two-thirds of UK shoppers are interested in trying agentic shopping tools, with roughly seven in ten wanting AI assistance for future purchases. Around one in five already report using AI for online shopping. The numbers indicate a market in transition rather than one that has arrived, but they point to a pace of adoption that will outrun many retailers' loyalty infrastructure.
The loyalty gap
Gregory's central argument is that loyalty has historically depended on repeated brand encounters during the shopping journey itself: browsing, discovery, promotion redemption, and post-purchase communication. Agentic tools, by completing or mediating those steps on the consumer's behalf, remove many of those contact moments.
"If a shopper never visits your website or app because an agent is doing it on their behalf, how do you reach them?" Gregory said. "Where consumers once held a direct relationship with a brand, that relationship is now increasingly mediated by tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, which are beginning to initiate, and in some cases complete, shopping journeys on a customer's behalf."
His prescription is to concentrate loyalty-building efforts in functions that agents are unlikely to automate soon: customer service, post-purchase experience, in-person retail moments, community events, and emotionally resonant brand storytelling. He also advocates rebuilding discount and reward mechanics so they incentivise repeat engagement rather than single transactions, noting that exclusive offers unlocked through an ongoing brand relationship are more defensible than one-off promotional codes.
Market context
Gregory's warning arrives at a point when the broader retail technology sector is debating how large language model-powered agents will reshape discovery and conversion. Agentic shopping is a subset of a wider trend: AI orchestration layers such as OpenAI's GPT-based assistants, Google's Gemini, and a growing number of third-party shopping copilots are beginning to sit between consumer intent and retailer inventory. For brands that have invested heavily in search-engine optimisation, paid social, and on-site personalisation, the shift represents a potential rerouting of traffic that those tools were never designed to address.
The loyalty management software market is itself crowded, with vendors including Salesforce Loyalty Management, Antavo, and Yotpo all pitching retention tooling to retailers. However, most existing platforms are architected around direct digital touchpoints, browser cookies, and app sessions. If agent-mediated browsing strips out those signals, the data pipelines that feed personalisation and segmentation engines could degrade alongside the brand relationship itself.
Gregory also raises the question of trust propagation in an agentic world, noting that an AI agent seeks credible sources much as a human shopper does. That suggests brands with strong review ecosystems, verified credentials, and high organic authority may enjoy an advantage when agents are filtering and ranking retailers on a consumer's behalf, a dynamic that could accelerate consolidation around a smaller set of high-trust merchants.
VoucherCodes itself has a commercial interest in the outcome: its affiliate and voucher model depends on being a trusted intermediary that agents and shoppers alike recognise as a legitimate deal source. Gregory's commentary is substantive, but retailers should weigh it alongside that context. The company's B Corp certification and claim to have saved UK shoppers over £50 million in the past year are offered as proof points of trust, though neither figure is independently verified in the release.