Was invited to Svenska Stadskärnor Årskonferens 2026, to talk about AI and how it is affecting shopping, both online and offline, in my role as co-founder of both E-commerce Park, Contentor and also active with both nybryggt.nu (as well as being involved in Zoegas historic café – which gives an experience of running a place in a city center.
I focused in my talk on Agentic Commerce, a topic which only a handfull of the people in the audience had heard about. Bringing this concept to everyones attention was the main goal, as it can potentially affect shopping quite a lot in the future. Even if it is not clear at all yet how it will actually work out.
It was followed by a panel with supersmart people (Annika Winsth, Jörgen Einarsson, and Joakim Wernberg) which had a lot of interesting discussions – and also came to talk about some novelties, such a the café being run by AI, and how that might be in the future.
I got a lot of questions afterwards, one that I find particular interesting was “how should someone running a store in a city think about AI and especially Agentice Commerce?”
That is a hard question to answer, both as it is new, but also depends a lot on what kind of store. But overall my recommendation would be to be digitaly present, have some kind of online shop (even if not the most advanced), and focus on having product information online. So that an AI can find you and knows what you are selling, more detailed then just “shoes” or “hats”.
But we are moving towards a future where being a brand is more important than ever, especially online. So if you can do things so that you are not just a storefront, but actually a destination, a place people care about, a place people talk about, then that is very good as well.