Proving AI ROI - 64% of Retail Leaders Can't
Proving AI ROI, Agentic commerce, pilot purgatory, and a project called Do Not Replace Bob, live from Shoptalk Fall with Perficient. 64% of retail and consumer leaders don't have reliable data on their own AI ROI. That's from Perficient's new 2026 State of the Industry report, built on a survey of 50 director-level and above leaders, and it's the exact question boards are about to ask every retail CEO. Recorded live and in person at Shoptalk Fall in Nashville, Ricardo sits down with Brandon Rael and Rupa Amin from Perficient to get past the stage talk on agentic commerce and into what it takes to turn AI activity into business results you can prove. They start with the invisible lost sale: when a consumer's AI shopping agent passes over your product, there's no abandoned cart, no bounce rate, and no trail. Rupa explains why B2B buyers who research with AI still want a rep, and how that changes the rep's job. Then the conversation turns to AI ROI itself: why so many projects can't be measured, why almost half of leaders are funding AI in the wrong order, and how a Perficient project earned the name "Do Not Replace Bob." What you'll learn in this episode. What the invisible lost sale is, and why agentic commerce makes it so hard to see. Why AI-referred traffic growth (393%, per Adobe) matters even with about 85% of retail sales still in stores. How B2B buyers use AI for product discovery and what they still want from a sales rep. Why AI ROI is so hard to prove when the baseline process isn't the one people actually follow. Why Brandon says a weak data foundation means "the house is gonna fall down the hill". How private label's record 23.8% unit share ties to AI product discovery. Why one accountable owner gets AI projects out of pilot mode faster than a committee The one thing Rupa says to start this quarter, before the board asks what your AI spend delivered Support Our Sponsor. Perficient. State of the Industry: Retail & Consumer report. https://go.retailrazor.com/Perficient Powered by 7,000+ advisors, engineers, and designers, Perficient implements AI-first solutions tha