Analysis ·
Who owns the customer in the age of AI agents?
- Publication
- Harvard Business Review (United States) · subscribers only
- Author
- Sangeet Paul Choudary
- Published on
- 9 October 2026 · read in the page structured data
Summary
The article explores how AI agents are transforming the customer relationship by taking on a growing share of searching, comparing, negotiating and buying, steps once controlled by companies through their own platforms. According to the article, the traditional levers of market power, such as engagement, network effects, supplier lock-in, proprietary data and even a company's own AI agent, no longer guarantee control of the customer relationship. The advantage would now go to companies able to help agents make better decisions, by linking customer intent to transactions and making use of observed outcomes. Six shifts are presented, from the declining importance of discovery and network effects to the growing value of transaction-level feedback.
Summary based on the article's title and standfirst, as the text is not accessible.
Read the article on Harvard Business Review →Classification
- Country
- Worldwide scope
- Company size
- All sizes
- Industries
- Retail and distribution, e-commerce · All industries, or industry not specified
- Keywords
- ai agents, customer relationship, marketing strategy, e-commerce, purchasing decision
Entry written by Marsanne Studio from the cited article, with the help of an AI model (claude-sonnet-5). The rights to the article and its illustrations belong to Harvard Business Review and its author. Entry translated from French by Claude Sonnet 5.5.