# The Future of Personalised Retail and Humand Commerce

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Retail Doctor Group
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag
- **Дата:** 08.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 28:38
- **Просмотры:** 43

## Описание

We’re delighted to present a thought-leadership session where Brian Walker, Chair & Founder of Retail Doctor Group, speaks with business futurist Morris Misel on the future of retail, the rise of agentic commerce, and how personalisation is redefining customer value in the lead up to 2030.

At the centre of the conversation is Misel’s concept of Humand, a shift in retail toward human-led demand executed through machine capability. The discussion explores how customers increasingly expect routine purchasing to be handled on their behalf, while still demanding relevance, value, and solutions tailored more precisely to individual needs. This reframes retail not as a channel decision, but as a system designed to reduce effort while increasing personal fit.

Walker and Misel also examine the growing role of agentic commerce in removing friction, the changing importance of traditional brand structures, and the opportunity for retailers to deliver more tailored, artisan-like value at scale through technology. The conversation highlights how poor execution and wasted time in retail environments are no longer tolerated when more efficient alternatives exist, raising the bar for service, fulfilment, and relevance.

Key Takeaways
Humand commerce is emerging: Retail is evolving toward a model where human intent is fulfilled through machine-enabled execution.
Friction is becoming unacceptable: Customers increasingly expect routine purchasing to be automated, reducing time and effort.
Personalisation is overtaking generic value: Competitive advantage may shift toward specificity, relevance, and fulfilment rather than broad brand recall alone.
Agentic commerce will reshape purchasing: Intelligent systems may search, decide, and transact on behalf of customers.
Retail must justify time spent: Poor execution weakens the role of physical retail when faster, more accurate alternatives exist.
Technology enables a return to precision: Scalable personalisation may allow retailers to deliver more tailored, high-value experiences similar to historic artisan models.


Contact the expert team at Retail Doctor Group for a complimentary 15-minute consult and 3 key insights about your business today.

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Hi everybody, it's Brian Walker, CEO and found of Retail Doctor Group. Uh I love these series as you know which are future of retail podcast series and if you follow or come on to Apple Spotify through retail doctor group or through our uh speakers if you like our other experts channels um fantastic there's some really great content and today we're with Morris Missile and you might recall that Morris and I had the pleasure going back probably the year and a half or so ago to talk about the future of retail. So let's see how many of our prophecies and uh thinking is starting to transpire with Morris missile business futurist uh very forwardthinking strategist certainly comes out of some academia but marries it to very uh focused discipline in business and we'll no doubt talk about the future of retail. Nice to see you Morris. It's wonderful to be back and I'm sure we'll talk about the future of retail somewhere in this chat. It is good to see you again, Brian. Thank you, Morris. You've coined a phrase which I rather like human hu m a n d when we're talking about the future of commerce and in this case the future of retail. — Yeah. — Tell us a little more about if you would. Human to me is it's a conjecture of two words. It's human and the reality for all of us, it always has been, is that you and I, and perhaps it's just me because I'm terribly lazy. I really don't want to work that hard. I want to find things that'll replace my hands, you know, that's why we invented shovels and sticks for fulcrums. It's why we invented all that kind of stuff with forklifts in factories and warehouses. And I kind of delegated a lot of the heavy lifting to machinery. And I've done that forever since I was put on this planet. Me as a human being for millenniums in the last 5 years, 3 years, 40 years, it depends on what version of artificial intelligence. And yes, I've already raised the AI word in this conversation. If you bring in an artificial intelligence into this conversation, I being absolutely selfish again have been able to do something beyond just delegating my physical tasks and that's delegating my thinking, my brain, the activities I did inside of my head. In the 80s, I kind of saw Excel the spreadsheet. I'm going somewhere with this Excel the spreadsheet and all of a sudden it could do all sorts of calculations and it could figure stuff out for me which meant I didn't have to push the abacus or the calculator or do things in retail. that became really important. It was the basis for being able to work out my stock levels, work out my margins, work out all kinds of things and to play with them cuz before then it was a real chore. I mean it was a manual operation and all of a sudden it became really swift. It wasn't AI but it was be it was the beginning of machine and what we now call a artificial intelligence. If we skip forward to today, we all know that we can do some really clever tricks using AI and agentic and we'll come to talk about that I'm sure. So I talk about human as saying the reality of the future of work which I break down into tasks because I think work is really just a series of tasks activities. Retail is the same. You got to answer the phone. You got to send the invoice out. You got to open the file. You've got to do your stocking levels. You merchandising. Whatever it is, they're all tasks that we can break down into repetitive tasks or not. is we really need to ask ourselves the question today given that task what the outcome is. Is it best done by a human because it requires creativity. It requires love. It contra it requires soul. It requires imagination. Is it best done by a machine that's just repetitive because that's what it needs? If we're building a widget or something in a factory, it just needs to do it over and over again. Or does it need intellect? And I use the word intellect. And do we bring an artificial intelligence that can do a bit of the heavy lifting thinking for me or is it a mixture of the three? And if we ask ourselves that question of every task we do, I think we end up with the optimum performance of getting that task done. So human is human, machine and artificial intelligence working together harmoniously more or less. You dial up which one you want more or less of to achieve an end task. And so retail CEOs and boards are facing this sort of existential question now at the inflection of every generational change evolution through history and into the future. Here we are faced with technology Morris that enables us to be more effective this great patenting machine we're calling AI uh and everyone's sort of you know it's hot to trot. Do you take a view ultimately that

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

retail will be enhanced as a consequence of the human approach and what sort of leadership will that take? Can I quote one of my most favorite thinkers on the planet and you have to be of my vintage to get this and that's get smart Maxwell smart. He said something that I think is incredibly appreciated and I use it on every stage in every conversation with clients too and that's you have a choice. You can use it for evil or niceness. It's really as simple as that. I believe that artificial intelligence like computers, like social media, like radio, like television, like gas, like electricity. In other words, every invention that we've ever put on this planet, which we've been told, if you go back into history of was the end of days when electricity and gas came in literally from the pulpit. You can go back and read it in the papers of the day, the New York Times from the late 1800s, that from the pulpit we were told not to have gas and electricity because they would be the end of the days. I'm making that point because artificial intelligence is incredible. I think it is one of those. In fact, I know it's one of those epoch changes in our lives like PCs were, like electricity and gas. This will forever and has already forever changed who we are and what we do. But the choices we make with it are really more important because we need we must remember that these are just tools to be used in the hands of great humans. That's my first point always. If we take a Schwarzenegger approach and say these technologies are going to dominate us, we've lost the race already. — To your second Y, — sorry, go for it. — Oh, I'm speaking loud here, but in the US of a million shops as we speak today, 40% of all retail is done by 10 leading retailers, Costco, Amazon, Walmart, so forth, Krugergers. And I think forward into the future about the use of technology and some inevitable displacement of roles and some inevitable replacement of roles and also new roles. I think to myself, wow, aren't the big going to get bigger? What does that mean in terms of and I hope I haven't taken me a second point here. What does that mean about the retail landscape and what leaders choices leaders are facing? both in terms of large scale operations down to that mid and smalls size retailer into the future. — So retail really hasn't changed ever since we put it on this planet. I don't think at its core. I know the way that we manifest it, the way that it runs itself has changed tremendously. But at its core, for me, it really comes down to three really simple things. It's attention, decision, and trust is what it boils down to. And yes, it manifests into a physical store. It manifests into an online store, manifests into a shopping market or whatever else. But when you break it down to its core, attention, decision, and trust, we really have to ask ourselves where does AI, where does the rest of that fit into this with leadership, which is one of the questions you asked. I I believe I know that we have to evolve our leadership as we always have to incorporate this new era. You know, what's the purpose of a leader? If it's still to manage, which is for many people what they do, they manage a process, they manage an activity, they manage a store. If that's what they're doing, then I think that they are increasingly becoming irrelevant. And those people might lose the group of tasks that they have around their job description. Why? Because AI and machines can manage much better than we can. They can keep a 24/7 eye on something that's happening. the stock levels, the pricing levels, the competitor down the road and what their prices have moved and how ours should, where the staff are coming or going, uh what's the right product mix, is there another product for this overseas that we should bring in, am I pricing it correctly? All those things can be done, not totally independently, but I'd suggest almost independently by a machine or a piece of artificial intelligence. So, if we're using the word incorrectly, leading and really talking about managing, which I argue most people are, then I think that's really just a road that's going to disappear and the jobs tasks people that only do that will also find it difficult. If we actually elevate leadership to what it is, and that's leading, leading is inspiring. It's making people want to do work. It's giving encouragement. It's showing mouse. It's showing the ability to think in ways that are different and purposeful and they're human traits. If we talk about leadership in those roles, I think there's going to be even more need for that because can you imagine a

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

really dry life where all of the activities are being done by these artificial bits and by machines and all of those decisions which are routine are done by that. I think humans become even more imperative, more important. And that's where I think true leadership shows up. And in retail especially, if we can lead a team, store, if we can actually take people on a meaningful journey and give them what they want, when they want, how they want, where they want, all those wants, then I think we have a really robust retail scene. Yes, it's different. I get that. Yes, it's dirty. It's lumpy. It's not what it used to be. there will be displacement. I argue about, you know, the purpose of the physical retail store. I'm also arguing about the physical about the purpose of an online store too, by the way, moving forward because with a Gentic, do we need an online store in the way we once did also? Maybe a good content to chat through. So, can I play the devil's advocate just for the sport of it? I suppose — I hope you will — in years to come. Uh I don't know if it would be me personally, but let's just hypothesize. I uh I have my robot in the house which looks after the house cleaning and does all those great things. I head off to work already. I've got some form of AI device that tells me what I should wear and what everyone I'm about to meet will wear. Uh and then of course I'll be in my driverless car because I want have needed to drive for 15 years. nor will any of my extended family uh will drop into my robotic coffee cafe to be greeted by an avatar or some form of siliconcovered humanoid who will then make me a perfect coffee because the consistency will be meticulous and precise. I'll then go to my place of work which will be a mix of robotic device and real humans. I'm just playing here. But what I'm getting at is globally and domestically, you know, retail is a huge employer of people. And if I think to myself that certain brands, one of the challenges for brands going forward will be how they differentiate and continue to differentiate. For others, it will be how they commoditize and accelerate space and pace at an exponential level such that when I visit the store, it will be for theater and entertainment. I will have no ambition to physically purchase anything and nor will there be stock there because I'll know and you and I will know that devices will deliver it as they're already starting to do at a faster rate with a far easier uh threshold of my usage and time. And so what does that all look like in the future? It looks exactly like you've described. Retail done differently. retail done differentiated on emotion, differentiated on theater and experience or at the other end of the spectrum scale volume and things I've touched on. Is that how you sort of see that wildly hypothetical situation in years to come in western developed countries anyway? — Can I say no? — I mean I do I do in the end degree. I don't buy into this totally colorless, bland, gray world that everything is going to be done by a piece of machinery. Autonomous vehicles. I've been talking about I know I'm pulling at threads and bits and pieces, but just pull out some of that. I have been talking about autonomous vehicles for 20 years in my practice. None of us really have one. I know that there are ones jumping around America and we'll get them soon, but they're not part of a landscape for most of us moving into tomorrow. I know that was only one piece. Well, I'm getting at by saying — I saw my first autonomous vehicle in London eight weeks ago. First time I've ever seen one. And it's a Black Henry Ford moment, you know. It's we're all we've all got our horses by the railing and along comes this car. It's that moment — in this rather remarkable scary futuristic. It's just kind of weird. — So, I'm not saying that we are not going to have all the things that you just described. You know, there are lots of robots. Elon Musk, our friend, who we have to mention in every conversation, uh, is working on home robots. Everybody's working on the bits and pieces you're talking about. I still push back, and this is me and my foibless. I still push back to a human world. So, I'm not convinced that we're going to have all of those toys and tricks, but the possibility of those will be, be there. More importantly, Brian, to me, is that you will have the choice to have the world that you want, and I'll I want. And that's important for retail because for some retailers and some models, it makes perfect sense for total automation. Walk in the front door, you

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

absolutely can recognize the person who walks in there. You know, the coffee, the tea, the hot chocolate, whatever they want. Your barista, whether that's a physical or a machine, can make it to perfection. The pricing, you know, all that money can be transacted without you being in there. The parking spot knows you're coming back. All of that can be done. Or are you looking for a community space to sit in? Somewhere to have a great conversation, somewhere where you can find nice people with a nice view and you can have that human interaction. Both of them are perfect. They both give you liquid. the ability to drink something, — but they're very different experiences. — Well, this is the interesting thing. And yes, this is a great chat. Is it not feasible that the experiences will feel and look identical? In other words, as AI develops into robots in years to come, they may or may not feel emotion for example, but they will mimic our facial expression at such speed and such um dimension and they will listen to every tone and inflection in our voice. So when I say to one of these robotic coffee operators who knows everything about me, uh, unfortunately my cat's not very well or my dog, whatever it is, uh, in comes empathy, in comes sympathy, in comes the dropping of the tone, and I will have had an experience just as I would speaking to an empathetic human being like yourself. And I will be equally fulfilled. or will I? — Well, again, I'm pushing back to the individual. I think most people will because I doubt technology will ever have emotion, but it will be emotive. In other words, it will be taught how to display something which we anthropomorphically I love that word. — I love anthropomorphic, which means that we believe it to be human. And as humans, we believe things to be human or be of human style. That's where we fall into the trap or into the love of it. And again, neither is wrong or right. But for retail, I think we need to be clever as we always have been and know who our audience is, who our customer is. We have to know what they want from us and what the experiences are. To me, the better picture for that is let's put away let's put aside the routine purchases, the things that you and I go into a supermarket or to an average store, you know, it's easily changeable. We don't really care. It's auto, you know, it's automatic. I think 50% of those things by 2036 if not more will be totally AI machine agentic who cares who whatever you'll walk in you'll pick it up it'll deliver it it'll come by itself because it knows you need it whatever mechanism in your world tells it to arrive when you need it will be what happens that to me is for the routine stuff because it's just so easy and it's customerdriven which means I'm not going to put a lot of effort into buying you know a bottle of milk or a pair of socks that I'm replacing or whatever If I'm buying a car, trip, if I'm buying something where there's more emotion, more at stake, I think it's going to be a mixture then. And I think we might want a human in there. We might want some empathy. As we do now, we'll most probably go to AI that'll give us a really good short list knowing who we are and what we like and what we do of the sorts of possibilities. And some of that may be enough to trigger a response. In which case, machine to machine. There's a whole conversation about retail that we have to have one day. What that looks like, but it'll trigger that in a way that makes sense. For others, it's going to trigger it enough to push us into a store because that store we want proof. We want a touch, feel sense. It might be we want camaraderie. We want proof. There's some physicality. And the store I shouldn't I mean when I use store, you and I, me are thinking about bricks and mortar and physical. It may not be. It may be a showroom. may be a park. It could be anything. But there's some kind of physical manifestation that gives the person the experience they want before they purchase. The a good retailer moving forward to me understands those possibilities and positions their products and services in a way that they're relevant to the audience at that particular time. And the beauty I think of AI and machines is that whereas once that was costly, it was difficult, it now is almost instantaneous. We can do it without thinking much. You know, it can push itself backwards and forwards. It can do what we need it to do when it and provide the end result. I think that's where we go with it. It's really a matter of, you know, are we authorizing or are we choosing is what it comes down to. — Yes. And if I can just continue because it's fascinating this devil's advocate approach in the conversation we've had so far we have probably generated hypothetically a million data points and data is the a is the domain of AI

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

and a robot is basically a machine with an AI brain in it. So this interesting piece around the what I would almost phrase now is the elasticity of emotion. If for example I can get 95% of experiences that satisfy me as a human in a synthesized synthetic artificial robotic futuristic world. What does, and this is a bit dystopic, but just for the sport of it, what does that actually look like? Well, it looks like highly emotive brands starting to be far more creative to touch the human social instinct. And then everything else ultimately, it's going to be share of voice driven by other factors. Marketing spend, brand, product, the usual classic pieces. But I can't help but think in this space we will see as we will see in other industries um significant displacement of what were traditional careers and a lot of creative thinking about what will be new careers. So I don't see it as a completely net piece and I know you speak about while leadership feels heavier in 2026 and I think it's a wonderful piece maybe the context of this is how do leaders navigate through these sort of changes when technology will ultimately lead us to the replicated human for all intent and purposes it already is starting — when you talk about Mr. Musk, his robots near him at his um shareholder meetings and what have you are there to signify we are getting more and more human. And so isn't it a fascinating topic about the future of retail? Who will have access to buy all this? make this real? And what will brand look like in those days? And then I wanted to ask you as we started to talk about the AI and agentic experience. Today we see Walmart, we see closer to home Woolworth's u setting up olive with its agentic AI. So you and I go shopping with this AI platform that produces menus, prices, competitive checks, offers, whatever those offer partnerships are. And we're not placing the order for our bride directly with wars. We're placing it with this agendic AI. — Yeah. Yeah. — Isn't that fascinating? — I think that's one of the new horizons that we really need to explore that what we're seeing exactly as you've just described so well is the reality that moving forward a lot of these consumer everyday goods will move in exactly that way. that agentic AI which is really the evolution I mean it comes from the word agent agentic which means somebody that does something on my behalf that's what agentic means and when we come to agentic AI something will do something on our behalf and that's in this case the system because we have authorized it to say that within these confines I hope we have anyway we should have as humans within these confines I'm allowing you on as my agent to go and to buy me the shoes or get me the milk or have this experience or find out more about where that TV turns itself on in the dark and looks good in that light and atmosphere and while you're doing that can you also pretend that you're in my lounge room and you can play around with the lighting conditions and do all that and so we're doing all of that. I absolutely agree and I think that for many consumers, shoppers, that'll be a boon. It means that we can interrogate, investigate, and think about the world that we want to buy and what in a much deeper way than currently we're able to. I was looking for something yesterday, a really mundane, simple item I needed yesterday. I went in, no exaggeration, to five different stores. This is a category that I do a lot of work in. I've been working with this industry for 25 years and I've got so much fodder. I cannot wait to get on that stage again when I see them in a month or two. I went into five stores looking for this thing. It's very specific, very easy. Needed it to be what it was. It took me to the fifth store to get what I wanted because four stores had no idea of what I was asking for. Two of them had no interest in even trying to accommodate me. And one, I swear I took pictures. one had nobody in it. There was not a person. There wasn't a customer and there wasn't anybody serving behind. I don't know where they were. And I stood there because I wanted to see how long it took. After about 4

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA17IlxZQag&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 28:00)

minutes, I just had enough and I walked out cuz I was timing it. — So in that experience, what have I actually achieved an hour and a half of my life driving around when a could have found it for me, bought it for me, and sent it home? Now, I know that's an extreme example, but it happened to me yesterday. And like you, I'm really mindful and acute when I go into retail of sensing what's happening around. Now, to me, that's not a great use of my time or their purpose or their stores. So, Agentic makes sense for that. But I still keep pushing back to this world that we need to understand that still requires much more. You talked about brands for instance. If we go back to the history of brands, they really only kicked in, I know they were around before, but they only kicked in really in the 1960s in a big way. And that's because we were taught to move away from generic items to a mass-produced item. And we had to be able to find it quickly on the shelf and buy it repetitively. I don't want brands. I want something specific to me. I don't really care about what it's on the outside. I care about what is on the inside. If the retailer can now provide me something that is more appreciient to the inside of it, in other words, spending more time and effort making sure that product service is assembled specifically for me and I attach that to them. Haven't I made the cash registering anyway? So, is brand as important as fulfillment in the future given that Aentic is making decisions for me and I no longer have to be clever enough to recall the name on the shelf? Well, this is interesting, isn't it? I mean, you time will beat us for this session, but uh I think I'd argue that it's a race to the bottom in the absence of brand and that's the challenge. If we use brand in the traditional way, yes. But if I increase, if I say that I am a provider of a service or a product and my name is known, but I am actually getting my repetitive clients, I'm getting my margin, I'm getting everything because what I'm providing is so appreciient of what you want. It's so close to what you want that it's hard for you to swap it out. Then I actually think that's a better value. I think that's better value for everybody involved. And if we allow machines and artificial intelligence and humans to orchestrate that for me, I think we've actually achieved something better than a beautifully designed logo that people remember forever, but the quality or the service really isn't exactly what I want. Now, I'm not saying we need to have either or. I'm saying that we can now do both. That's the joy because there's purpose and use for having both. But the latter one of making it so personalized of actually going back to the days where there were artists, where there were artisans, that was too expensive and too cumbersome. That's what stores used to have artisans. They didn't they don't anymore. I'm arguing we can go back to that in the future and make that cost competitive as well as the other. — Well, you know what, Morris? What a fantastic session. And I think after I leave this, I'm going to go down to my automated cafe, talk to my autonomous robot that remembers the trivia of my life, look on my agent, and look back at the good old days in which to cast forward. Uh, you're a gentleman. What a If you get a chance to hear Morris speak, please do. I mean, it's so grounded. It's so forward thinking. Uh, I've been entertained, stimulated, and appreciative. Morris, thank you very much for today. — It's a pleasure as always. Look forward to our next chat.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52810*