When Things Go Wrong With A Commerce Task, Many Consumers Will Blame The Answer Engine
We asked consumers in the US, the UK, and Canada who they would hold responsible for issues when they use an answer engine to complete commerce-related tasks. Consumers might take personal responsibility for some issues (such as feeling that their prompts hadn’t been targeted enough) or might even hold the brand they ordered from responsible.
Their top answer, however: the answer engine.
Agentic commerce will continue to evolve fast
We’re seeing some pretty big changes in agentic commerce. Most recently, OpenAI chose to outsource checkout as it ended its Instant Checkout feature (at least for now). Instead, it has now partnered with Amazon — arguably the dominant force in digital commerce.
Maybe answer engines are realizing that owning the full commerce journey comes with risks.
Why native checkout in answer engines is insufficient
It’s sobering that more than two out of five consumers would place the blame for issues on the answer engine itself. Aside from legal distinction such as a “merchant of record,” it’s clear that consumers perceive that the answer engines must take responsibility for the experiences they provide to them as customers. Commerce experiences are all about product discovery and checkout.
Entire operational and experiential areas of commerce are missing from many native checkout experiences, including:
- Inventory availability
- Delivery promising
- Loyalty and membership benefits
- Post-purchase tracking
- Post-purchase support
- Order history review
Agentic commerce can only be stable and widely adopted when it meets all the fundamentals of digital commerce. Until then, we may see more answer engines testing their own risk tolerance.
Get in touch for a guidance session or inquiry to talk through what we’re seeing as agentic commerce approaches maturity and these developments unfold.
*Per Forrester’s ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community (MROC) survey from March 2026
