Pieter Van den Broecke
EMEA Leader, Supply Chain Commerce Strategies, Manhattan Associates
British retail is at an inflection point. Scale, assortment and brand presence alone no longer guarantee continued success.
With structural complexity increasing, consumer expectations accelerating, execution gaps widening and external, macroeconomic factors once again disproportionately affecting the economy, the financial and experiential benefits of unified commerce maturity have never been more important.
Across Europe, unified commerce maturity continues to advance. However, the paths and pace vary as customer journeys splinter, global logistics and fulfillment costs continue to rise and AI becomes an active participant in the commerce narrative.
According to the 2026 benchmark report, over 66% of consumers use two or more channels before completing a purchase.1 Marketplaces, social platforms and messaging apps have fundamentally changed how customers discover, evaluate and buy. Retailers that rely on owned storefronts alone are increasingly losing out to platforms they don’t control.
Global logistics and fulfilment costs have risen by over 20% in the last three years, stress-testing the economics of retail across every region.1 Customers now expect faster delivery, flexible delivery options and seamless service as standard, not part of premium offerings. Retailers that cannot meet these expectations at scale pay for it in cost and customer loyalty.
AI now an active commerce participant
McKinsey estimates AI in retail will unlock over $500 billion in value globally by 2030.2
While the first wave of AI in retail was about efficiency, automating tasks and reducing cost, the next wave is about intelligence. That means systems that anticipate demand, personalise in real-time and resolve friction before customers encounter it.
Across each region, retailers are deploying AI across the commerce journey, but adoption remains uneven, and the gap between ambition and execution is widening. While chatbots and virtual assistants are widespread, fewer than 5% of retailers globally offer dynamic, real-time personalisation powered by AI.3
As unified commerce complexity grows, intelligent orchestration becomes the next critical frontier. But the key distinction is that AI doesn’t replace the unified commerce foundation; it amplifies it.
The retailers best positioned to lead in the AI era are those that have already built the operational processes and IT architecture to support it. Unified commerce leaders are already creating that foundation.
Below are three areas the 2026 benchmark report highlights as key to success in tomorrow’s world, where AI and commerce will be synonymous with each other:
Personalisation at scale
AI enables retailers to move beyond segment-based targeting to truly individual experiences. Content, recommendations and promotions adapt in real-time to each customer’s behaviour, context and intent. This lifts conversion while reducing dependence on broad, margin-eroding discounts.
While the first wave of AI in retail was about efficiency, automating tasks and reducing cost, the next wave is about intelligence
Agentic fulfilment and operations
AI is transforming fulfilment from reactive execution to intelligent anticipation. Leaders are deploying agentic workflows to predict stockouts, reroute orders dynamically, automate returns and proactively resolve delivery exceptions before the customer even notices.
Conversational commerce and service
AI-powered conversational channels are becoming primary commerce touchpoints across all regions. The most advanced retailers are moving beyond scripted chatbots to context-aware agents that maintain continuity across sessions, complete transactions within the conversation and resolve service issues without human escalation.
In summary, the 2026 benchmark report highlights the potential for 2x higher growth rates for brands with mature unified commerce operations. However, it also underlines that leadership is becoming more difficult to achieve and maintain as global retailers face a compounding set of challenges.
Perhaps the greatest opportunity highlighted is the potential to leverage AI across mature unified commerce environments and drive operational efficiency and profitability.
Retailers pulling ahead in the unified commerce stakes are not winning on any single capability in isolation. They are succeeding because they have reimagined the end-to-end customer journey, leaning into challenges like AI adoption and shifting consumer trends to seize the opportunity ahead.
[1] Manhattan Associates Inc. (2026). Manhattan Associates’ 2026 unified commerce benchmark reveals the high price of standing still in retail. https://tinyurl.com/ykkktsm3.
[2] McKinsey & Company. (2026). Sovereign AI: Building ecosystems for strategic resilience and impact. https://tinyurl.com/4t6pufyb.
[3] Manhattan Associates Inc. (2026). Global Unified Commerce Benchmark 2026. https://tinyurl.com/vs44jpwf.
