[DECODED] Commerce in the Age of Context: When Buying Journeys Collapse

Dec 1, 2025

Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategy and Insights at CI&T, brings her expertise in consumer behavior to the discussion. She reveals how the linear shopping journey has collapsed, making buyers more fluid in their decisions. With 74% of consumers using AI tools, the need for brands to weave into customer conversations is crucial. Each social platform plays a unique role in the buying process, particularly how invisible transactions, like those on TikTok, drive sales. Melissa emphasizes that brands must reduce friction and focus on authentic experiences.

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INSIGHT

Platforms Play Different Purchase Roles

Different social platforms serve distinct roles in the buyer's journey rather than being interchangeable.
YouTube for discovery, Facebook for purchase, Reddit for research, and TikTok/Instagram for entertainment-first influence.

INSIGHT

AI Is Embedded In Purchase Paths

AI is already embedded in most consumers' shopping paths with high adoption.
74% of surveyed US consumers use AI tools at least occasionally during path-to-purchase.

INSIGHT

Brands Becoming Their Own Media Channels

Brands and retailers are becoming both media and commerce owners to capture creator-driven conversion.
Owning the content-distribution relationship helps capture attribution and sales previously missed.

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The traditional linear shopping journey has collapsed. Commerce now happens everywhere, and consumers are navigating this omnimodal reality with unprecedented fluidity.

Phillip Jackson and Lindsay Trinkle sit down with Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategy and Insights at CI&T, to unpack findings from her Retail Tech Reality Check research. Together, they dissect how different platforms serve distinct purposes in the buyer's journey, why "omnichannel" is more relevant than ever, and what happens when everything becomes shoppable but commerce itself becomes invisible.

In this episode, we explore how the expanded digital ecosystem is fundamentally reprogramming how consumers engage with content, community, and commerce. With 74% of US consumers now using AI tools in their path to purchase, brands can no longer control the narrative—instead, they must embed themselves intentionally into customer-led conversations across multiple contexts.

Commerce Is Invisible; Context Isn’t

Key takeaways:

Each social platform serves a distinct purpose: Facebook for purchasing, YouTube for discovery, Reddit for research. Context matters more than channel ubiquity.
The invisible transaction wins: TikTok succeeds because it's entertainment-first. The less commerce feels like commerce, the more consumers buy.
Attribution is broken: Traditional linear models can't capture circular, contextual journeys. Focus on conversion, repeat purchase, and brand awareness—the only metrics you can trust.
Search remains unsolved: Basic functionality like filtering furniture by dimensions is still missing. Data quality and search methodology are foundational competitive advantages.
Micro-influencers drive outsized impact: 45 passionate referrals matter more than 45,000 followers. The persona of the referrer (picky, experimental, passionate) outweighs reach.
AI will reshape holiday 2025: Gifting anxiety makes AI particularly valuable. Consumers use it to avoid looking stupid and navigate uncertain return processes.

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