The Predictive Enterprise and the Future of Agentic Commerce | Kasey Lobaugh, C Futurist Consumer Industry @ Deloitte

In this episode of Retailgentic, Deloitte’s Chief Futurist Kasey Lobaugh joins us to explore the future of agentic commerce. Kasey has spent nearly three decades advising global retailers, brands, and manufacturers. He launched Deloitte Digital, now a multibillion-dollar business, and today leads Deloitte’s Future of the Consumer Industry platform. Known for coining the “great bifurcation” of consumers, Kasey helps executives anticipate disruptive forces and chart strategy amid seismic change.

Scot and Kasey unpack the forces reshaping commerce and the role of AI:

• Six forces shaping the consumer industry
• The great bifurcation of value vs. convenience shoppers
• Rise of predictive enterprises
• Fragmentation and shifting demographics
• Agentic AI and digital services growth
• Declining Google traffic and new discovery models
• Why “hopping the cost curve” may be essential

Highlights

• 00:02:00 – Meet Kasey Lobaugh, Deloitte’s Chief Futurist for the consumer industry
• 00:05:00 – The six forces shaping the future: consumer, culture, tech, industry, climate, and politics
• 00:10:30 – Why growth feels constrained: demographics, barriers to entry, and shifting spend
• 00:15:00 – The new bifurcation: asset owners vs. providers of labor
• 00:20:00 – From mass retail to hyper-relevance powered by AI
• 00:23:00 – The predictive enterprise: moving beyond insights to compute-led foresight
• 00:25:30 – Surprising predictive attributes: why buying a cat can forecast retail behavior
• 00:29:30 – Women and wealth: a dramatic shift by 2030
• 00:34:00 – The decline of search and rise of GenAI discovery
• 00:40:00 – Retailers in the age of ChatGPT checkout
• 00:46:00 – AI isn’t blockchain or VR: why adoption curves look different
• 00:50:00 – Creativity unlocked: from AI-generated music to new consumer products
• 00:54:00 – Hopping cost curves: why efficiency alone won’t win the AI era
• 00:57:00 – Closing thoughts: racing to abundance, not the bottom

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.