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A CMO’s Guide to Google’s 2026 CX Strategy

Gerry Murray — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses Google’s 2026 CX strategy, which ushers in agent-driven commerce, integrating AI-powered agents, Universal Commerce Protocol, and persistent shopping experiences. Google aims to mediate and monetize the customer journey. CMOs must adapt by enhancing product data, enabling real-time decisioning, and redefining brand roles within Google’s ecosystem to ensure visibility, seamless interoperability, and consistent customer experience across both Google and owned channels.

“In the era of agentic shopping, first-mover brands that adapt to the new rules of agentic commerce will gain structural share advantages,” says Gerry Murray, director of Enterprise Applications and Agents at IDC. “Product visibility through commerce AEO will be equally or more important than brand visibility via content AEO.”

IDC Survey Spotlight: As Agentic AI and GenAI Commerce Solutions Top Hotel Operators' Investment Agenda, What Will Ultimately Determine Which Operators Turn That Ambition into Competitive Advantage?

Dorothy Creamer — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight looks at how hotels face an agentic commerce sequencing problem as investment plans outpace infrastructure.

Major hotel brands are racing to apply agentic commerce capabilities, but worldwide plans for agentic commerce are outpacing the data and infrastructure investments those capabilities depend on. And herein lies the issue. Hotels want agentic commerce as a salve for losing bookings to other channels — a familiar problem they faced when online travel sites emerged. The risk now is not being surfaced at all to potential guests who are shifting their discovery funnel into AI-led channels. This means investments in data modernization and the systems to support that discovery will be more important, but currently, the trend is tipping the other way.

"Hospitality operators must tread a careful line," says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies, IDC. "Planning for the future requires a well-calibrated balance and sometimes the patience to make sure that systems are built properly, which requires scalability, security, reliability, and redundancy. While agentic commerce investments are warranted, prevailing wisdom tells us that failure rates will increase if the appropriate infrastructure investments are not made."

Market Forecast: U.S. SMB Communications Services Forecast, 2026–2030

Daniela Rao — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation analyzes and forecasts the revenue for the U.S. small and medium-sized business (SMB) communications services market. The presentation provides IDC's definitions of SMB and telecom voice and data categories, and it presents a detailed forecast, beginning in 2025 and extending through 2030.

"Small and medium-sized businesses understand the necessity to invest in technologies and services that address their operational challenges, but they will continue to have limited resources. Telcos targeting SMBs should design new value-creating propositions rooted in their networks, ecosystems, AI, and analytics capabilities to address the pricing challenges with services geared to remove friction between SMBs' daily operations and digital transformation road map." — Daniela Rao, senior research and consulting director, Worldwide Telecom and UC, IDC

Worldwide Digital Commerce Applications Forecast, 2026–2030

Heather Hershey — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Presentation provides a five-year forecast for the worldwide digital commerce applications market and examines how enterprise commerce is evolving amid growing pressure to modernize storefront, order management, and merchandising capabilities while cautiously exploring agentic AI. As organizations pursue commerce modernization and AI-enabled customer experiences, demand is shifting toward composable, API-first platforms that support incremental modernization without disrupting existing operations.

The study highlights how buyer expectations are changing as AI hype outpaces demonstrated ROI. Organizations are looking beyond experimental agentic capabilities and increasingly favor platforms that pair innovation with measurable business outcomes, digital trust, and regional compliance, all while supporting cloud-scale deployment without compromising enterprise control. This shift is driving demand for platforms that reduce implementation risk and provide clearer evidence of business value across commerce programs. The forecast also explores the factors influencing market growth through 2030.

Agentic Commerce: B2C Buyer Life-Cycle Opportunity Analysis

Ananda Chakravarty, Heather Hershey — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation looks at agentic commerce. As AI agents move from novelty to infrastructure, they’re quietly rewriting the rules of consumer retail. In this presentation, IDC analysts deliver the first rigorous, end-to-end map of what happens when shoppers stop browsing and start delegating purchasing decisions and execution to agentic AI.

Drawing on an analysis of 343 distinct factors across 5 journey stages and 4 stakeholder groups, the research cuts through the hype with a clear-eyed verdict: barriers currently outnumber opportunities, and the biggest disruption isn’t where everyone is looking.

The findings challenge conventional wisdom at every turn. Agentic commerce doesn’t just create new opportunities; it reallocates control, shifting competitive advantage upstream from brand influence to algorithmic selection. Merchants and brands emerge as the most exposed stakeholders, at risk of becoming metadata in an algorithmic race to the bottom of pricing. Perhaps most surprising is that the greatest value of agentic commerce isn’t in the dazzling front-end experience at all, but in the unglamorous back-end orchestration of fulfillment, inventory, and service.

For any leader trying to separate signal from noise in the agentic era, this research is essential strategic reading. It moves beyond “what AI can do” to the questions that will actually determine winners and losers of the agentic era of commerce:

What is agentic commerce?
Who absorbs the risk when an AI agent gets things wrong?
Who controls the interface of the experience?
Where does value ultimately consolidate?

The companies that internalize these lessons now will be the ones still visible if and when agents become the default front door to commerce.

IDC ProductScape: Worldwide Retail Marketplace Platforms Software Providers, 2026

Cristiano Quattrini, Ornella Urso — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The IDC ProductScape offers a comprehensive guide on the key functionalities of retail marketplace platforms, featuring products from AOE, Flipkart, Izberg, Lengow, LogiCommerce, Marketplacer, Mirakl, Nautical Commerce, Octopia, Rithum, Spryker, Ultra Commerce, and VTEX. The status of each functionality is categorized as fully supported, partially supported, partner provided, road map, or not supported, aiding technology purchasers in quickly identifying vendors that align with their changing requirements.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Which Factors Have Consistently Driven Extended Reality Deployment Success, and How Have Their Relative Importance Shifted from 2025 to 2026?

Ramon T. Llamas — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines the factors that organizations identify as most critical to the success of their extended reality (XR) deployments, drawing on a year-over-year comparison of responses from IDC's U.S. XR Commercial Surveys conducted in April 2025 and March 2026. It reviews how eight success factors, spanning solution design, technology choices, security, partner selection, and cost management, have shifted in relative importance across the two years.

The document describes which factors have held their standing, which have gained relevance as deployments mature, and which have eased in priority, providing a data-grounded view of how organizational focus in XR programs is evolving over time.

フェアリーデバイセズとダイキン工業が進める産業現場データのAI活用

Go Suzuki — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

産業現場では、人手不足、熟練者の高齢化、技能伝承の難しさが深刻化している。生成AI（Artificial Intelligence）、AIエージェント、ロボティクスの発展によって、現場で取得される映像、音声、作業・判断情報は、将来のAI学習資産としての重要性が高まっている。本調査レポートは、フェアリーデバイセズの市場での位置づけやソリューションの概要、ユースケース、ベネフィットを整理し、ダイキン工業の事例とIDCの視点を通じて、CWS（Connected Worker Solution）の導入や現場データ活用を検討する企業に示唆を提供している。

Agentic Commerce: Are AI-Generated Answers a New Gateway to Liability?

Heather Hershey, Roger Beharry Lall — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses a landmark Munich court ruling that found Google liable for false AI-generated answers, redefining AI outputs as authored claims rather than mere search results. This signals a shift in legal accountability for AI answer engines, with significant implications for agentic commerce and brand discovery. As AI-generated content becomes central to consumer interactions, organizations must prioritize source accuracy, audit exposure, and update indemnification terms, recognizing that the shield protecting platforms from liability may no longer apply when AI synthesizes and authors information.

"Brand leaders have been racing to appear in AI-generated answers. Munich adds a harder question: What happens when those answers are wrong, and who is left holding the liability?" — Roger Beharry Lall, research director, Advertising Technologies and SMB Marketing Applications at IDC

Best Practices in Leveraging AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI for Retail Operational Workflows

Cristiano Quattrini, Margot Juros — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape identifies best practices for retailers seeking to apply agentic AI to operational workflows. It focuses on four common challenges: orchestrating fragmented retail data and processes, embedding AI into frontline work, using AI to improve inventory and fresh-product decisions, and governing autonomous actions in sensitive operational environments.

Retailers are entering a phase in which the competitive value of AI depends less on experimentation and more on operationalization. The issue is not whether retailers can build pilots, but whether they can connect agents to the data, systems, teams, and controls required to influence day-to-day decisions. Walmart’s development of Wally illustrates the emerging use of agentic capabilities for merchandising and inventory decisions. Marks & Spencer’s rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot illustrates how GenAI can improve frontline productivity and decision support. Carrefour’s use of AI for supply chain and fresh-product planning shows the value of advanced forecasting and optimization, while Amazon’s use of multimodal AI for fulfillment quality and compliance demonstrates the potential of AI-enabled operational automation. Together, these examples show how retailers are building the foundations for more autonomous and agentic operational workflows.

The practices discussed in this PeerScape show that agentic AI succeeds when it is deployed around clear operating problems, when users understand its role, when workflows include human oversight, and when retailers measure outcomes such as labor productivity, stock availability, waste reduction, faster decision cycles, improved customer service, and lower operational risk.

“Agentic AI’s real value emerges when it becomes part of the operating model, connecting signals, decisions, actions, and accountability across stores, supply chains, commerce, and customer service. Retailers should start with workflows where AI can reduce decision latency, improve consistency, and free teams from repetitive coordination work while keeping humans responsible for judgment, escalation, and customer impact,” says Cristiano Quattrini, senior associate advisor, IDC Retail Insights.