From omnichannel to intent-driven commerce in 2026

Justin Thomas, VP Sales - EMEA North for Akeneo, explains why channel strategy is collapsing into decision-moment strategy. For the last decade, omnichannel has been retail’s single objective: to be consistent everywhere, publish the same product story across every touchpoint and remove friction between online and offline.

In 2026, that model will start to break, because the competition has changed. Shoppers no longer move neatly through channels. They move through intent. And intent shows up in bursts - a spark of discovery on TikTok, a scan of a QR code in-store, a comparison on a marketplace, a question asked to an AI assistant, a last-minute reassurance on a PDP. Each of those moments demands a different piece of product truth.

The winners will be the brands that can orchestrate product narratives at the decision moment, without compromising accuracy, governance or trust.

The single description era is over

Most organisations still treat product content as a fixed asset - a fixed description, a set of attributes, a standard bundle of imagery and maybe a short and long version. That approach worked when the main job was to populate a website and syndicate to a handful of partners, but today’s interfaces don’t just display product information, they interpret it.

TikTok and creator-led discovery don’t reward exhaustive specification. It rewards clarity, vibe and ‘why this matters’ in three seconds, with social proof and real-world context.

Marketplaces reward the ability to scan and compare. They prioritise structured attributes, badges, variants and compliance-ready content that survives small screens and filters.

In-store QR codes are a different game again; the shopper is already holding the product. What they want is reassurance on provenance, allergen information, compatibility, warranty, care, repair, sustainability proof, all the details that remove hesitation.

In-store media needs high-impact truth: one claim, one benefit, one reason to choose. The message must be precise enough to trust and simple enough to land in the middle of the aisle.

AI shopping agents demand a new kind of truth altogether - structured, explainable, verifiable data that can be retrieved, reasoned over and defended. If your product story is ambiguous or incomplete, the agent simply selects a different product.

What we are dealing with is not just different channels but different decision moments, each with its own requirements for context, depth and proof.

Intent is the new architecture of product experience

If omnichannel was about presence, intent-driven commerce is about precision; it’s a shift from where will we sell, to what question is the customer trying to answer right now?

In practice, most purchase journeys compress into a handful of recurring intents:

• Inspire me (discovery): “What’s trending? What fits my style? What do people like me choose?”
• Help me choose (evaluation): “Which is right for my needs, my space, my skin, my budget?”
• Prove it (reassurance): “Will it fit? Is it real? Will it arrive on time? What’s the return risk?”
• Make it easy (execution): “Is it in stock? Will it work with what I own? Can I buy it now?”

A product record that’s perfect for one intent can fail badly in another. A beautiful lifestyle narrative might inspire, but it won’t help an AI agent compare compatibility. A dense technical sheet might satisfy evaluation, but it won’t stop a scroll on social.

This is why “one product story everywhere” is quietly becoming “the wrong answer delivered consistently.”

What changes inside the organisation

Intent-driven commerce forces a rethink of how product information is designed, governed and activated.

Firstly, from consistency to governed variability. The goal is not to create contradictions. It’s to create multiple valid renderings of the same truth, each optimised for the moment. That requires a controlled approach to variability: A core set of verified facts (the non-negotiables), contextual layers (what to emphasise for each intent), evidence links (where claims come from: certifications, testing, source systems), and Guardrails (what cannot be said, where and without proof).

Secondly, from publishing to orchestration. Content teams can’t manually craft bespoke product narratives for every platform, format and micro-moment. Orchestration means turning product truth into modular components (attributes, claims, comparisons, benefits, imagery sets, usage scenarios) that can be assembled dynamically based on intent.

And thirdly, from channel KPIs to decision-moment KPIs. Measuring by channel hides the real problem. Intent-driven metrics expose it, including which missing attributes correlate with abandonment? Which claims reduce returns for this category? Which proof points increase conversion when the shopper is in ‘reassurance mode’? And which variants get selected by AI assistants and why?

A practical playbook for 2026

Brands making this shift are typically doing four things in parallel:

• Map your intent matrix: For each category, define what the buyer needs to know at discovery, evaluation, reassurance and execution. Appliances, beauty, fashion and luxury each have different confidence triggers and they need codifying.
• Design product truth in layers: Create a hierarchy from core facts to contextual messaging to proof. This is the foundation for scaling across TikTok, marketplaces, PDPs, QR experiences and AI interfaces without drifting into inconsistency.
• Treat governance as growth infrastructure: The more AI and automation shape commerce, the higher the cost of bad data. Governance is now about how you protect trust while moving faster.
• Close the loop with performance signals: Returns reasons, customer questions, review themes and search behaviour should feed back into your product information strategy. In intent-driven commerce, “what went wrong” is often an information gap and it’s fixable.

The bottom line

Omnichannel promised a seamless world where every touchpoint told the same story. Intent-driven commerce is messier and more powerful. It recognises that shoppers don’t experience channels. They experience moments of intent and those moments demand different evidence, different emphasis and different depth. The goal is to achieve the right slice of product truth at the exact moment it matters, consistently, responsibly and at scale.