NRF 2026 Roundup: Consumer strength, re-inventing processes, new protocols, and more

Technology vendors continue to challenge retailers to re-invent customer experiences and streamline operations. Many organizations may still be trying to find a bit of reprieve after heavy lifts in recent years around cloud migration, omnichannel commerce, automation, device modernization, and more. 

But stories of reinvention thanks to AI show no signs of decelerating in retail or any other industry. From an economic perspective, measurable signs of AI investment could become a meaningful indicator of growth. If measures of headline consumer sentiment and surveys of business performance are becoming less reliable, fundamentals will become more critical to measuring performance,

“This is a period of structural transformation in the economy driven by AI and other technologies,” said Michael Pearce, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, in a panel conversation at NRF 2026. Individual firms should be preparing for change brought about by AI’s infusion into business in combination with the other factors like the impact of policy change, he believes.

“I think ultimately in the long run, it will be a positive, but the future's going to look very different from today. It would be a mistake to turn away from adopting these these technologies because of transition problems. But they need to be managed. [Businesses] need to be aware of them and be speaking about them”

Retail priorities

Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index found that 80% of workers noted a lack of time or energy to do their work, while 53% of managers believe that productivity must increase. That imbalance is a perfect fit for AI, Microsoft’s retail industry leaders believe, and they encouraged NRF 2026 attendees to think about a world in which workers delegate ever more tasks and workflows to AI agents. 

Microsoft VP for worldwide retail and consumer goods industry Keith Mercier told the audience that customers are already progressing through the phase of human-led agents and toward an environment of “human-led, agent-operated” AI. He explained:

We have customers today that are using agents to forecast which products are going to perform poorly, and they don't wait till Monday. They work through the weekend. They can even do it on Friday. Believe it or not, we have agents today that are already writing the first draft of marketing briefs. We have agents today that are writing a copy, designing home pages, and we even have legal agents that are approving terms and conditions for promotions.

As agent use becomes more sophisticated, Microsoft expects organizations to deploy an array of agents, working together and largely autonomously. Mercier even suggested that at retail “frontier firms”, the term Microsoft uses to describe the organizations with the most advanced and sophisticated use of AI agents, executives will be budgeting for a mix of agents and human employees in the upcoming fiscal year.

In a frontier firm, [the] CFO will come to their business leaders and say, congratulations, you get 10 new hires this year. Five of them are gonna be agents. How are your agents and your human staff going to work together to achieve the goals that we [set]?

Brian Franz, chief technology, data, and analytics officer at The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), told Mercier that at ELC, which has $14 billion in sales across 20 brands, AI and agent investment has started with data. But harnessing data at the volume of a major retail conglomerate can feel like a black hole. “It’s never ready, but it has to be ready,” he remarked. 

ELC is approaching AI with a focus on end-to-end processes and continuous improvement, Franz explained. The company is looking at agent capabilities in both operational and consumer-facing scenarios. He described more about the decision process: