COMMERCE / WHO GAINS? / HOW ARRANGEMENTS REDISTRIBUTE ADVANTAGE
Do AI shopping partnerships strengthen marketplaces or bypass them?
An AI channel can become the place customers choose what to buy while still relying on a retailer or marketplace to deliver the purchase. The intermediary gains a route to demand, but its position depends on what customers and the channel still need from it.
Compare the arrangements ↓01 / SELECTION AND EXECUTION
The change in the customer journey
AI channels can separate choosing a seller from completing the purchase.[1] A shopper can compare offers in an assistant while the merchant accepts the order and provides the service. The merchant keeps that work, but the assistant can influence which merchant receives it. That influence becomes a source of bargaining power when shoppers accept substitutes and merchants cannot reach those buyers through equivalent routes.[2]
02 / THE DESTINATION CHANGES THE OUTCOME
How the arrangement changes the intermediary's role
A referral to Booking.com brings the marketplace another route to customers. A referral to IHG's own booking service reaches the hotel group directly.[3] Both are referrals, but they place the intermediary differently: one keeps the marketplace in the purchase, while the other offers a route around it. The IHG route would displace marketplace business only if customers use it for bookings that would otherwise pass through a marketplace.
03 / COMPLEMENTS AND CONTROL
Strategic implications for retailers and marketplaces
For a retailer or marketplace, keeping order fulfilment matters most when the connected service gives shoppers a reason to choose it. Instacart's connected basket and delivery service illustrate how an AI channel can draw on an existing service rather than recreate it.[4][5] The channel can still compare providers offering a similar service. Account terms also matter: Target carries account linking and Circle benefits into Copilot Checkout, while Shopify merchants cannot require sign-in there.[6] Those rules affect how readily a merchant can recognise and serve an existing customer across channels.
EXPLORE THE RESEARCH
The arrangements behind the analysis
Inspect the recorded configuration and its competitive interpretation. Several records can describe the same partnership at different stages or in different roles.
Browse the full partnership research
Each record identifies the operating status and date of the arrangement.
CONNECT THE ARGUMENT
Strategic assessment
Assess what the partnership makes easier for customers and what it makes easier for the partner to replace. A new source of orders can strengthen the business while also giving the AI channel more influence over which sellers customers see. The next page compares that dependence on both sides.
Next: who has the alternatives? →Other ways to explore Commerce
Research records
Based on the reconciled 81 episode/role records across 58 direct case bundles, including documented, planned, historical and specification material. Seven company-context cases and one boundary case remain outside the direct distribution. Source passages, dates and configuration history remain in the coordination-pattern record panels.
APPLY THE RESEARCH
Assess what these partnerships mean for your position.
Work through the capabilities, contributions and terms that could strengthen your business—or commission a focused investigation.
Sources and notes
Third-party analysis. Boston Consulting Group, "Agentic Commerce Is Redefining Retail - How to Respond" (2025), sections "The Threats to Retailers" and "How Retailers Can Prevail"; McKinsey, "The agentic commerce opportunity: How AI agents are ushering in a new era for consumers and merchants" (17 October 2025), chapter 1. These accounts inform the distinction between customer choice, direct contact and direct or brokered purchase routes. The conditional interpretation here is the Observatory's; the reports inform the analysis of how customer access changes competitive position.
Theory. Richard M. Emerson, "Power-Dependence Relations," American Sociological Review 27, no. 1 (1962), pp. 31-41, especially pp. 32-33. Dependence concerns valued outcomes and the cost of obtaining them elsewhere. The Observatory applies this reasoning to customer access and seller substitution.
Case evidence. Booking.com, "Booking.com Debuts Agentic AI Innovations, Adding to its Robust Suite of GenAI Tools for Customers" (9 October 2025), ChatGPT app description; IHG, "IHG Checks In On... AI Guest Acquisition & Loyalty" (August 2026), discussion of its ChatGPT app and direct booking. These issuer statements describe the purchase routes.
Case evidence. Instacart, "Instacart App Launches in OpenAI ChatGPT - First Company to Offer New Instant Checkout App Experience" (8 December 2025). The launch describes cart building and purchase in Instacart's embedded app, with shopping and delivery through its platform. This is launch evidence; subsequent checkout continuity remains unresolved in the held research.
Theory. Sangeet Paul Choudary, Reshuffle (first edition, July 2025), "Containerization as coordination," pp. 23-24. The distinction between moving an interface and coordinating a complete service informs the interpretation here; the case details come from Instacart's launch account.
Case evidence. Target Corporation, conversational AI fact sheet (June 2026), Copilot Checkout account linking and Target Circle benefits; Shopify Help Center, "Selling on Microsoft Copilot," archived 5 October 2026, prohibition on requiring merchant sign-in. The account rules are documented; retention and bargaining advantage are not established.