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NRF 2026 Signals the Rise of Agentic Retail: Five Key Trends Shaping CX, Loyalty, and Commerce

Ornella Urso — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how NRF 2026 marked a pivotal shift for retail, moving from generative AI experimentation to the operationalization of agentic AI across customer experience, loyalty, and commerce. Intelligent agents are now central to retail operations, mediating discovery, decision-making, and transactions. Key trends include transaction-capable AI interfaces, embedded agentic capabilities, open protocols, and resilient infrastructure. Retailers face both opportunity and risk, as agentic retail promises greater personalization and efficiency but demands new operating models, governance, and data foundations.

"Customer experience in retail is shifting from reactive engagement to agent-led orchestration, where AI not only assists shoppers but actively shapes discovery, search, payments, and post-purchase relationships across digital and store environments," said Ornella Urso, research director, IDC Retail Insights. "Retailers need to align strategic investments in data, inventory visibility, and interoperable platforms with operational changes in merchandising, store operations, and service workflows will convert agentic AI into higher conversion rates, improved margin performance, and deeper lifetime customer value."

Top IDC Retail Takeaways from NRF 2026

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the top IDC retail takeaways from NRF 2026. NRF 2026 revealed a retail and hospitality landscape on the brink of reinvention, where AI agents orchestrate how customers discover, decide, and buy across every channel. From agent‑ready stores and frontline teams powered by intelligent tools to unified data, supply chains, and B2C commerce standards built for AI‑mediated journeys, this document traces how organizations that attended NRF are moving beyond experimentation toward a future where connected intelligence, real‑time decision‑making, and human‑centered experiences become the true engines of growth.

"As always, NRF provides the retail backdrop for the year in terms of innovation, technology, operations, customer experience, and focus. This year, retail will be about how to harness agentic AI and convert it from aspiration to execution," stated Ananda Chakravarty, research VP, IDC Retail Insights.

Dell Technologies FY 4Q26 and FY26 Results: From AI Surge to Structural Scale

Matthew Eastwood — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Digital Business Professional Services in the Age of Agentic Work: Ecosystems, Talent, and Operating Models

Erin Hichman — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how AI is fundamentally reshaping digital business professional services, driving a rapid transition from labor-led models to AI-augmented, platform-driven, and agentic delivery. Providers that can industrialize AI responsibly and demonstrate real business impact will capture a disproportionate share of transformation spend. For buyers, evaluating partners on platform maturity, governance, and operating model is critical to long-term success.

"Very soon, AI-native delivery will be the competitive norm—organizations that act now to embed AI into their core operations and partner with providers who can deliver at scale will set the pace for the industry." — Erin Hichman, research manager, Digital Transformation Professional Services, IDC

Digital Infrastructure Maturity Leaders Prioritize Hybrid Architectures for AI Readiness

Simon Piff, Mary Johnston Turner — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation summarizes the results of IDC's recently completed digital infrastructure maturity assessment, examining the relationship between business outcome improvement and mission-critical digital infrastructure investment and operating model choices. The analysis is based on a worldwide survey of 600 digital infrastructure decision-makers conducted in September 2025.

The assessment defines digital infrastructure maturity leaders as the top quartile of organizations, as measured by reported levels of year-over-year business outcome improvements linked to digital infrastructure investments in 2025. Leaders demonstrate several important traits that set them apart from less mature organizations, including:

Laser-focus on anticipating AI requirements and optimizing digital infrastructure for workload-specific demands, with 80% of leaders citing AI as either the most important or a very important factor driving their overall digital infrastructure budget and technology decisions for the coming year
Strong reliance on hybrid architectures that rely on integrated public cloud and on-premises digital infrastructure resources optimized for the needs of different workloads (Fully 64% of leaders describe their current overall digital infrastructure strategy as hybrid.)
Prioritization of investments that directly improve data management, quality, compliance, and sovereignty

The assessment framework provides detailed comparisons of how leaders compare with less mature organizations across a range of digital infrastructure decisions and offers tech buyers an important opportunity to assess their own maturity and refine existing digital infrastructure investment road maps.

Industry Personas Handbook: Worldwide Grocery Retail, 2026

Filippo Battaini, Cristiano Quattrini — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation is IDC's Industry Personas Handbook, designed to provide technology vendors with a better understanding of their buyer personas in the global retail grocery sector. It aims to answer the following questions:

Who are the key personas I need to address with my offering (products and services), marketing messages, sales campaigns, and sales activities?
What are their strategic priorities and day-to-day responsibilities?
What are their major operational pains and strategic challenges?
What KPIs drive decision-making and investment priorities?

Is Your Payments Platform Ready for Stablecoins? A Practical Guide for Product Managers

Jordan Steele — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective outlines market dynamics, an enterprise readiness model, a phased road map, and a practical checklist to help leaders make informed decisions about when and how to add stablecoin support. Stablecoins have rapidly evolved into a regulated payment rail that enterprises can use to reduce friction in cross-border payments and enhance treasury operations. For midmarket and enterprise software providers, the core question is whether their platforms are ready to expose stablecoins as a safe, programmable option alongside existing rails such as ACH, SEPA, RTP, and wires. This document explains the market and regulatory context, presents an enterprise readiness model, and details the key capabilities required to support multi-rail orchestration, compliance, and accounting at scale. It also offers a phased road map and readiness checklist that product, finance, risk, and IT leaders can use to plan pilots, prioritize investments, and align on next steps.

"Stablecoins are shifting the conversation in enterprise payments from 'should we support crypto?' to 'how do we move value over the rail that offers the best combination of safety, speed, and transparency for each transaction?'" says Jordan Steele, research manager, Worldwide Financial Applications Support at IDC. "When stablecoins are treated as another governed rail inside existing finance workflows, software providers can modernize the cash cycle without requiring customers to overhaul how they work."

NVIDIA FY 4Q26 and FY26 Results: NVIDIA Shapes the Intelligence Economy

Matthew Eastwood, Brandon Hoff — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Cisco Q2 FY26: Accelerating AI Infrastructure and Campus Networking Refresh Drive Strong Results

Chris Barnard, Brandon Butler — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

From Technology Provider to Orchestrator of Autonomy: The CIO's Framework for Industrializing Agent Vetting

Serge Findling — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

By 2027, G2000 enterprises will experience a 10x surge in agent deployments and a 1,000x increase in token/call volumes, transforming agent vetting from an emerging practice into a mission-critical CIO responsibility. Without formal vetting frameworks, up to 20% of G1000 organizations will face lawsuits, substantial fines, and CIO dismissals by 2030 due to inadequate agent governance. Yet only 35% of CIOs will successfully implement agent life-cycle management by 2029.

This IDC Perspective provides a five-pillar framework, 90-day implementation road map, and strategic guidance to help CIOs capture the 20% competitive advantage in innovation, speed, and service excellence.

"The agent vetting framework represents the essential first step for CIOs to evolve from technology providers to orchestrators of autonomy — balancing innovation velocity with governance rigor in an era where autonomous entities outnumber human decision-makers," says Serge Findling, adjunct research advisor with IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).