In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with Luca to unpack a research paper that blends academic rigor with real-world implications:
“LLMs Reproduce Human Purchase Intent via Semantic Similarity licitation of Likert Ratings.”

The paper, co-authored with Colgate-Palmolive researchers, explores whether AI can accurately simulate human reactions to product concepts, enough to replace or accelerate traditional consumer panels, which are slow, expensive, and hard to scale.

This one goes deep, but in ways that any retail or AI leader should care about. Scot and Luca discuss:

• Colgate’s Challenge: How to test product concepts faster and at scale.
• Synthetic Consumers: AI models that react to products like human panels.
• Accuracy Breakthrough: Reaching ~73–74% agreement with real consumers.
• Fixing LLM Failure Modes: Why naive prompts don’t work, and what does.
• Bayesian Reasoning: Adding uncertainty so AI stops being confidently wrong.
• Smarter A/B Testing: Using AI to pre-screen ideas before running live experiments.
• Digital Clones: Future consumers earning money by sharing preference data safely.
• Simulated Populations: Matching real audiences for testing and predictions.

AI isn’t just helping brands write copy or generate images, it’s beginning to think like their customers. If synthetic consumers continue to evolve at this pace, product development, A/B testing, and personalization may look completely different in just a few years.

Timestamps:
03:00 — Luca’s background: Rocket Internet, HelloFresh, Lazada, Stitch Fix
08:00 — How PyMC Labs was founded & why Bayesian modeling matters
16:00 — Bayesian thinking explained in simple terms
19:00 — High-stakes decisions & why probabilistic reasoning matters
24:00 — Colgate’s challenge: testing product concepts at scale
26:00 — How synthetic consumer panels work
30:00 — Accuracy results: humans vs. AI (~73–74%)
32:00 — Why naive LLM prompting fails (“mode collapse”)
35:00 — How reasoning → scoring solves accuracy issues
38:00 — Example: synthetic consumers evaluating PyMC’s own website redesign
44:00 — How AI can pre-screen ideas for smarter A/B testing
48:00 — Where AI cannot replace causal testing
49:00 — Digital clones & monetizable consumer preferences
52:00 — Future benchmarks, new LLMs & evaluation methods

👉 Connect with Luca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lfiaschi/
👉 Learn more about PyMC Labs: https://www.pymc-labs.com
👉 Check out the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08338

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#Retailgentic #AgenticCommerce #SyntheticConsumers #AIShopping #ProductTesting #CPGInnovation #GenerativeAI #BayesianModeling #Ecommerce #FutureOfRetail #DataScience #LLMs #AIResearch

In this episode of Retailgentic, host Scot sits down with Mike Edmonds, PayPal’s VP of Agentic Commerce & Commercial Growth, to unpack the massive pivot PayPal has made into the Agentic Commerce era, and what it means for retailers, brands, platforms, and developers.

Mike goes deep on:

• PayPal’s Agentic Bet: Why PayPal is going all-in on Agentic Commerce
• Merchant Anxiety, Explained: The real reason so many merchants are anxious about LLMs
• Instant Checkout 2.0: Where PayPal sees Instant Checkout heading next
• Wallets as Identity: Why wallet identity will matter more than ever
• 2030 Predictions: Mike’s bold predictions for shopping agents in 2030
• Two-Track Future: A world split between autonomous commerce and luxury human-led experiences
• Protocol Chaos Simplified: How PayPal plans to tame and unify an explosion of competing protocols
• Merchant of Record Relief: The surprising emotional fear merchants have about disintermediation

As AI agents reshape discovery, checkout, and trust, PayPal is building the rails for the future of digital commerce.

Key Timestamps:
02:15 — Mike introduces his background.
04:45 — How Mike’s career path led directly into PayPal’s Agentic Commerce leadership role.
06:20 — What “VP of Agentic Commerce & Commercial Growth” really means at PayPal.
07:48 — The biggest lessons Mike learned leading AI strategy at Microsoft.
10:35 — What merchants are actually thinking about Agentic Commerce (the real pulse).
12:18 — Mike explains the off-surface vs on-surface Agentic Commerce model.
13:10 — Why merchants feel overwhelmed by LLMs, APIs, and protocol sprawl.
14:47 — PayPal’s role as the one-to-many connector across LLMs and platforms.
16:06 — What technical pieces merchants need in place to integrate Agentic checkout.
17:45 — How on-surface conversational agents can finally boost conversion rates.
19:30 — Why conversational checkout is the missing piece in Agentic shopping.
20:55 — What the Perplexity partnership enables for checkout, payments, and reach.
23:30 — How PayPal is powering ChatGPT Instant Checkout and expanding ACP.
26:12 — Why Agentic protocols are diverging, and how PayPal navigates the chaos.
28:30 — The emotional fear merchants have of LLMs.
30:05 — Mike’s 2030 prediction
31:40 — Why some categories will automate, while luxury experiences stay human.
33:10 — Multimodal will reshape shopping through voice, gestures, and identity.
35:00 — The top concerns merchants raise in every PayPal Agentic conversation.
37:05 — Where to find Mike and what PayPal has coming next.

Announcements & press releases related to the conversations:

• Perplexity: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-05-14-Perplexity-Selects-PayPal-to-Power-Agentic-Commerce
• Google (commerce agent for merchants: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/financial-services/introducing-an-agentic-commerce-solution-for-merchants-from-paypal-and-google-cloud
• OpenAI: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-28-OpenAI-and-PayPal-Team-Up-to-Power-Instant-Checkout-and-Agentic-Commerce-in-ChatGPT
• AP2: https://developer.paypal.com/community/blog/PayPal-Agent-Payments-Protocol/ and https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol
• PayPal’s Agentic Commerce Services: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-28-PayPal-Launches-Agentic-Commerce-Services-to-Power-AI-Driven-Shopping

👉 Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/
👉 Learn more about PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/us/home

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In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot talks with Stu Solomon, CEO of HUMAN Security, the company analyzing 20+ trillion digital interactions every week to detect bots, fraud, and now agentic AI behavior. Stu breaks down:

• Why bots now exceed human traffic
• The 1300% growth in agentic activity
• How HUMAN identifies good vs. bad bots
• The rise of agentic logins, navigation, and even checkouts
• Why spoofing of ChatGPT and Perplexity traffic is exploding
• What retailers need to know about letting AI agents crawl their sites
• The coming world of agent-to-agent commerce

If you’re preparing for the future of retail, ad tech, AI commerce, or online security, this is essential listening.

Timestamps
02:20 — What HUMAN actually measures (bot vs human vs agentic)
03:40 — Stu’s background (military → Amazon → banking → VC → CEO)
06:40 — The logistics + retail connection
09:00 — How HUMAN works: media + enterprise security
11:00 — The digital journey from ad → login → checkout
12:11 — HUMAN at 20 trillion interactions/week
16:55 — Why HUMAN started publishing agentic data
17:50 — 1300% growth in agentic activity
18:30 — Machine traffic surpasses human traffic
19:40 — The diversification of generative AI traffic
20:30 — Agentic login + website navigation behavior
24:00 — How HUMAN distinguishes bot vs agent vs human
33:00 — The bad side: spoofed ChatGPT & Perplexity traffic
38:30 — Retailers blocking bots without realizing it
47:00 — The inevitability of agentic adoption
48:40 — The future: agent-to-agent transactions
49:30 — The end of 2FA hell?

👉 Connect with Stu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stu-solomon-733a217/
👉 Learn more about HUMAN: https://www.humansecurity.com/

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In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with one of the most influential product leaders in commerce technology: Nitin Mangtani, SVP & GM of Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Their relationship goes back almost two decades, intersecting at Google, during the rise of online shopping, and now again at the dawn of agentic commerce. Nitin shares his journey from supply chain analytics at i2 Technologies, to building Google’s earliest commerce products, to founding and scaling PredictSpring, and finally leading Salesforce’s reinvention of unified and agentic commerce. This conversation is packed with history, strategy, and forward-looking insights into where AI shopping agents are taking the industry.

Timestamps:

03:20 – Early career: i2 Technologies & supply chain beginnings
10:00 – Joining Google in 2006
13:30 – Launching Google Commerce Search & Site Search
16:40 – Froogle/Google Shopping goes from “fun project” to billion-dollar business
18:00 – Comparison engines, feed specs & early retail taxonomy challenges
20:15 – Canonicalization and why product data was Google’s first “AI problem”
22:40 – Leaving Google to start PredictSpring
24:20 – PredictSpring’s original vision: mobile commerce & no-code apps
26:05 – Pivoting PredictSpring: TAM realities & shifting to Point of Sale
29:00 – Competing with Shopify POS, Square & the white space in enterprise POS
31:30 – Startup lessons: pivots, risk, funding & an 11.5-year journey
34:45 – Salesforce approaches PredictSpring: acquisition story
38:00 – Meeting Marc Benioff & Salesforce’s leadership culture
41:00 – Becoming SVP/GM: unifying Commerce Cloud, POS, OMS & Payments
44:10 – Agentforce & the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with OpenAI & Stripe
47:10 – Discovery vs checkout: why syndicated checkout is harder
49:30 – Messaging commerce: WhatsApp, SMS & conversational transactions
51:30 – Full automation: replenishment, grocery & true agentic behavior
52:45 – Why commerce is strategically important to Salesforce

Agentic commerce isn’t just a channel change, it’s a full-stack rewrite of how discovery, decision-making, and checkout work. Nitin makes clear that the next wave won’t be about small UX improvements, but about systems that think, act, and transact on behalf of consumers and retailers alike. With leaders like Nitin driving Salesforce’s transformation, the future of unified and agentic commerce is arriving faster than expected.

👉 Connect with Nitin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/
👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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In this episode of Retailgentic, host Scot Wingo sits down with Johnathan McGowan, co-founder & CEO of PayOS, to discuss how AI agents will handle payments safely and compliantly.

From Visa and Mastercard partnerships to the first live Agentic token transaction, Johnathan explains how “day-one-ready” infrastructure will power the future of Agentic Commerce.

Timestamps:
01:56 — Meet Johnathan McGowan, co-founder of PayOS
04:00 — From Visa to PayOS: the founding story
06:40 — What Agentic Payments really mean
08:10 — Partnering with Visa & Mastercard
10:25 — “Day-one-ready” vs new payment rails
12:50 — What PayOS actually does
15:30 — Agent builders and early use cases
18:40 — Understanding “intent” in payments
21:50 — Future-proofing across protocols (AP2, ACP, etc.)
24:55 — How the first live Agentic transaction worked
29:50 — Why PCI compliance & trust matter
36:00 — The global scale of Agentic Commerce

As AI agents start making real-world transactions, companies like PayOS are making sure those payments are not just possible, but trusted, secure, and global from day one.

👉 Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnathanm/
👉 Learn more about the PayOS: https://www.linkedin.com/company/payos/

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OpenAI’s Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji joins Scot Wingo on the Retailgentic Podcast to unpack OpenAI's recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper "How People Use ChatGPT".

From asking vs. doing to AI-powered shopping behavior, this deep dive reveals how generative AI is transforming the economy and how soon “agentic” commerce will redefine online retail.

This episode is more than a window into OpenAI, it’s a look at the data shaping how humans and agents will interact, shop, and make decisions in the years ahead. If you care about where AI is really headed, this one’s not just worth your time, it’s required listening.

Timestamps:
02:00 – Meet Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI’s Chief Economist
06:00 – How the ChatGPT usage study began
10:30 – What surprised the team most
15:00 – Asking vs. Doing: the evolution of agentic behavior
19:00 – The viral “colored columns” chart and what it shows
22:00 – AI and the future of writing, learning, and work
26:00 – How Ronnie bought jeans with ChatGPT
28:00 – The 2.1% insight: early AI commerce signals
33:00 – Voice + vision = the next leap for agentic shopping
38:00 – The global view of AI adoption
42:00 – What’s next in OpenAI’s research
45:00 – Closing thoughts & how to follow Ronnie

👉 Connect with Ronnie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-ronnie-chatterji/
👉 Learn more about the paper we discuss: https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/

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In this episode of Retailgentic, Salesforce’s Director of Strategy and Consumer Insights Caila Schwartz joins Scot Wingo to break down Salesforce’s 2024 Holiday Forecast, and how AI agents like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are transforming the path to purchase.

They cover:

• How 21% of global holiday spend will be influenced by AI
• Why discovery (not discounts) is this year’s theme
• Why Baby Boomers are finally using ChatGPT for shopping
• How Gen Z is bringing the mall back with AI in hand
• The return of “Discount Chicken” and the Tuesday-after-Cyber-Monday surprise

Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome + Caila intro
01:00 – What Salesforce’s Consumer Insights team does
04:30 – Agentforce and AI momentum post-Dreamforce
07:00 – Holiday forecast: “Discovery” as the 2024 theme
08:00 – How Agentic tools are changing product search
09:45 – $263B in AI-influenced sales
12:00 – Gen Z, Baby Boomers, and agentic adoption
15:00 – Q3 data: growth, traffic, and product detail engagement
19:30 – LLM referrals vs social media conversions
22:00 – ChatGPT Checkout and embedded commerce
25:00 – AI in physical stores — 57% of shoppers use agents in-store
28:00 – Holiday sales forecast and discount trends
33:00 – The rise of “Discount Chicken”
38:00 – Loyalty consolidation and the price-sensitive consumer
42:00 – Gen Z’s love of in-store experiences
47:00 – The future of unified data and physical + digital retail
50:00 – Closing thoughts

👉 Connect with Manil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caila-schwartz/
👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

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In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot Wingo talks with Manil Uppal, Founder & CEO of CartAI, about building the “execution layer” of agentic commerce, where AI agents don’t just recommend products, they buy them. From his early startups acquired by H-E-B and UPS to his vision for CartAI, Manil shares how his team is solving the hardest problem in agentic shopping: completing checkout seamlessly across any retailer.

Key Timestamps

• 00:02:00 – Manil’s background: from delivery startups to AI infrastructure
• 00:09:00 – The “aha” moment: from “Where to Buy” to “Go Buy It”
• 00:15:00 – The 3 layers of Agentic Commerce: Catalog, Payments, Checkout
• 00:20:00 – How CartAI executes merchant-native checkouts across platforms
• 00:26:00 – Why retailers need a whitelist for good agents
• 00:33:00 – Handling out-of-stocks, variants, and dynamic pricing
• 00:40:00 – Thoughts on ChatGPT’s new ACP standard
• 00:43:00 – Lessons from early food delivery startups for agentic commerce
• 00:46:00 – The future: vertical AI apps, expert agents, and commerce everywhere

Agentic commerce is evolving fast and CartAI is building the rails to make it work.

👉 Connect with Manil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maniluppal/
👉 Learn more about CartAI: https://www.cartai.ai
👉 Explore their substack: https://substack.com/@cartai

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In this special Retailgentic episode, guest host Kiri Masters turns the tables on our regular host, Scot Wingo (CEO, ReFiBuy). They unpack the next big retail revolution, Agentic Commerce, and what it means for shoppers, retailers, and brands as AI shopping agents like ChatGPT and Perplexity redefine discovery, loyalty, and checkout.

Scot shares the lessons behind ChannelAdvisor, Spiffy, and now ReFiBuy, plus why messy product catalogs, ad overload, and loyalty programs will determine who wins in the AI marketplace era.

⏱️ Key Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: Kiri turns the tables
02:15 – Scot’s early career & first startup
07:50 – Building ChannelAdvisor
14:30 – Lessons from going public
20:05 – Spiffy and the services economy
26:40 – Discovering AI → the spark for ReFiBuy
33:00 – What is Agentic Commerce?
38:20 – ChatGPT & Perplexity in the marketplace race
45:00 – The product catalog problem explained
51:00 – How ReFiBuy solves it with AI
55:20 – Retailers’ edge: loyalty, data, customer experience
59:00 – The next phase: marketplaces 2.0
1:02:00 – Close: The future of AI shopping

👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 Learn more about ReFiBuy: refibuy.ai

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot Wingo sits down with Jason Nyus, General Manager of North America at Shopware, a leading open-source e-commerce platform. Jason brings over 25 years of experience (20+ at Digital River) to unpack where e-commerce is heading, why Shopware is betting big on agentic commerce, and how the Agentic Commerce Alliance could shape the industry’s future.

Timestamps:
02:00 – Jason’s 25-year journey in e-commerce, from Digital River to Shopware
06:00 – The early days of app stores: Nokia, Blackberry, Microsoft
09:45 – Why Digital River pivoted and what commoditization taught him
13:00 – Why Shopware sees opportunity in mid-market and complex use cases
20:30 – Shopware’s scale: $23B processing volume, top 6 global commerce platform
26:00 – Introducing the Agentic Commerce Alliance: vision, openness, and independence
36:00 – Use cases for agentic commerce: competitive pricing, loyalty, and customer service
42:00 – Risks and opportunities for Shopify, Google, and Amazon in the agentic era
46:00 – Jason’s predictions: a billion-dollar brand without a website, 25% of e-commerce becoming agentic by 2030
Jason makes it clear: the future of commerce won’t be decided by one platform. Shopware’s vision of an open, agent-friendly ecosystem is a bold alternative to a closed, platform-controlled future. The Agentic Commerce Alliance could become one of the most important initiatives shaping AI-driven retail.

👉 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnyhus/
👉 Learn more about Shopware’s vision: shopware.com
👉 Explore the Agentic Commerce Alliance: agentic-commerce.org

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://youtu.be/4xI9qXNU_R0