Beyond Points: The Rise of Agentic Loyalty in AI-Driven Commerce

Srinivasan Nithyanandam:

The retail brand loyalty programs are no longer only about transaction points, frequent money of coupons, or subscription-based member-only services. The loyalty to a brand and the loyalty strategy are going to be shaped up by the advancements in agentic commerce and the rise of AI shopping assistance like Publicity, ChatGPT, and so on and so forth. The research reports have been warning that old-style transaction loyalty programs are losing its relevance, and the loyalty strategy has been evolving from a points to an experience, now the consumer saying, I feel recognized or I feel valued during all my interactions with the brand. In the traditional approach, all of predetermined offers are mapped against the consumer segments using their demographic attributes, behavioral attributes, recency, frequency, monetary value, by the propensity models and machine learning algorithms without taking into consideration of the intent or the context of the path to a purchase.

The consumer's response to such offers are going to be shaped up by the agentic AI assistance, which will take the objective of the consumer, do the research, compare the products across the various retailers, and also eventually making the purchase decisions on behalf of the consumer. In this context, it's imperative to have an agentic, buyer-aware loyalty agent, which can take into consideration of intent and the context to come out with a personalized hyper individualized rewarding experiences. Imagine a scenario where a loyalty program of brand offers points, personalized points during certain shopping moments, or offering the points or money of coupons during another shopping moment, or another rewarding experience during a some other journey. And this scenario can be very well realized by taking into consideration the advancements of agentic AI and the power of large language models provide a better product experience, improved product discovery, increased conversion and customer lifetime value.