iMedia is ready for an insightful exploration into the world of Commerce. Our event features engaging keynotes, interactive panels, and fireside chats led by industry experts. Discover valuable insights and actionable strategies to boost your business success.
*Please note that session details are subject to change and will be updated regularly.
Join us in the Pearls Bar for some refreshments before a big day of networking.
Delegates arrive at the hotel to register and check in ahead of the afternoon formalities.
The Next Conversion Frontier: Winning the Moments That Matter
Growth in 2026 won't come from sweeping transformation alone — it will come from incremental optimisation across the moments that influence purchase decisions. As AI-driven discovery and agentic shopping models begin to reshape how consumers research and buy, retailers face a dual challenge: drive performance today while preparing for tomorrow's more autonomous commerce journeys.
This executive panel will explore the economics behind conversion optimisation — examining which improvements genuinely drive profitable growth, how checkout design and payment flexibility influence basket size, approval rates and cost-to-serve, and how high-quality structured data improves discoverability across channels. Speakers will share what they've tested, what's paid off, and what they've had to rethink.
Business Connect Playbook: How to Win in 5 Meetings
Sponsors and solution providers get a straight-talking guide to maximising their 1:1 meetings. Expect insider advice on framing conversations, understanding retailer priorities, and standing out as a trusted partner.
Retail in Motion: Setting the Stage for AU 2026
A sharp, high-energy welcome outlining the commercial realities shaping the agenda and the decisions leaders will leave prepared to make.
Retail has spent years digitising workflows. The next phase is more confronting: systems that decide, act, and optimise without waiting for approval.
Discovery algorithms choose what customers see. Pricing engines adjust margins in real time. Inventory systems allocate stock before teams review. Content platforms publish without sign-off. The shift is not from slow to fast. It is from assisted to autonomous.
Shopify sees this transition across thousands of retailers. This session shares the patterns emerging from retailers who are managing it well: where they draw boundaries, what they keep human, how they structure accountability, and what governance looks like when approval cycles disappear.
The platform is no longer a tool. It is an operator. The question is not whether to manage that shift, but how.
Retail growth was built on the assumption that customers knew what they wanted and went looking for it. That assumption no longer holds.
Discovery is now visual, predictive, and algorithm-led. Demand forms long before search, clicks, or site visits occur. As AI increasingly shapes what customers see and consider, retailers face a visibility problem traditional attribution can no longer explain.
This session reframes the top of funnel for 2026. It explores how intent forms earlier, why search and last-click models are losing relevance, and what retailers must change if they want to influence choice rather than simply react to it.
This is about shaping consideration before customers know what to search for.
Hailed as one of the most rewarding parts of the summit, business connect involves 5 x 10 minute meetings designed to float topline objectives and explore synergies. Delegates are required to request and confirm these meetings prior to the summit.
Delegates can use this time to refresh, check-in with work and explore the surroundings.
Network and mingle with delegates of the event ahead of the official welcome dinner.
Dinner Keynote | Leading Brands People Trust in an AI World
AI is now embedded across retail. Leaders are urged to move faster, automate more, and adopt earlier. But speed is no longer the differentiator. Trust is.
Drawing on decades inside global brands, Nick Gray explores what it takes to build organisations that are machine-enabled but human-trusted. He examines how trust is formed psychologically, how emotion shapes memory and loyalty, and why human judgment becomes more — not less — important as systems take on more decisions.
Rather than focusing on tools, this keynote looks inward: leadership presence, decision confidence, and the emotional climate teams operate within. It explores what happens when organisations defer judgment to systems instead of strengthening it.
This is a conversation about depth over speed, clarity over automation, and why leadership mindset determines whether AI creates momentum or confusion.
Day 2 begins with breakfast and barista coffee!
Hailed as one of the most rewarding parts of the summit, business connect involves 5 x 10 minute meetings designed to float topline objectives and explore synergies. Delegates are required to request and confirm these meetings prior to the summit.
Take a break and refuel with coffee and morning tea.
Retailers are under pressure to execute faster across channels and markets. Yet content velocity is slowing as complexity rises.
Fragmented systems, duplicated work, and unclear ownership are now the bottleneck. As AI accelerates creation, the real risk shifts from speed to loss of clarity over what goes live and why.
This session focuses on how retailers are rebuilding content foundations to move quickly without sacrificing control. It covers practical approaches to governance, workflow, and accountability that allow speed to scale without amplifying inconsistency.
Speed without control creates risk. Control without speed creates irrelevance.
You've scaled personalisation. Your data warehouse is massive. Your rule engines are humming. Your teams are drowning.
And somehow, your customers feel less understood than ever.
Most brands are facing a question they're not ready to answer: Is the problem with how we're personalising, or is it something deeper?
In this session, Insider sits down with Mariana Franco, a marketing leader who's spent five years inside the complexity of retail personalisation.
From high-velocity ecommerce at OZSALE to scaling lifecycle marketing at Wesfarmers OneDigital, to now leading digital operations at Coates,
Mariana has watched the personalisation landscape shift. She's built systems, scaled campaigns, and confronted some uncomfortable truths along the
way.
What she's learned will challenge how you think about customer data, marketing strategy, and what it actually means to put customers first.
This session isn't about the latest tools or frameworks. It's about rethinking the fundamentals.
If you've ever wondered whether your marketing is getting smarter or just noisier, this conversation is for you.
Retailers have become increasingly effective at generating intent. But intent that doesn’t convert doesn’t pay, and as acquisition costs rise, the gap between almost-purchased and actually-purchased is where a growing share of revenue quietly disappears.
Most re-engagement strategies still rely on blunt instruments: generic abandoned cart emails, broad segments, and timing that has little relationship with when a shopper is actually ready to return and complete their purchase. The question is not whether to re-engage, but whether the approach is precise enough to bring high-intent shoppers back to checkout and recover revenue rather than add noise.
This session pairs platform perspective with retailer experience to examine what AI re-engagement that brings shoppers back to checkout actually looks like — what changes, what the returns actually look like, and where the limits of the approach still sit.
The discussion will explore:
International expansion rarely fails at strategy. It fails at execution.
Inconsistency, misinterpretation, and small experience gaps erode trust long before performance data flags a problem. As AI accelerates localisation, the risk of getting details wrong increases.
This session examines what must be governed as retailers scale globally — beyond translation. It focuses on protecting clarity, intent, and trust across markets when automation accelerates output but not judgment.
Scale is won or lost in details long before results show up in reporting.
For years, retailers were promised that a "Single View of the Customer" would revolutionise how they compete. Many built it; most are still waiting for the revolution to arrive.
The visibility problem has largely been solved, but the decision problem remains. Leadership teams can now see customer behaviour across every channel, yet they still struggle to answer the questions that matter most: Which customers are at risk right now? Where should we intervene? What is the next best action for the team standing in front of the customer?
The bottleneck is no longer the data - it is the distance between what the platform knows and what the organisation actually does.
In this session, we examine why unified infrastructure rarely produces unified action and how leading retailers - like Rodd & Gunn - are making customer intelligence operational across trading, service, marketing, and store teams. We’ll explore how to move beyond static dashboards to a Commerce model that closes the gap between insight and execution.
Because the retailers pulling ahead are not those with the most data. They are the ones who have mastered the art of acting on what they already know.
Retailers are entering a new discovery environment where visibility is no longer the same as recommendation.
As consumers increasingly use ChatGPT to explore products, compare options, and shortlist brands, a new question emerges: what makes AI surface you, trust you, and recommend you over someone else?
This session examines the signals that appear to shape ChatGPT visibility and recommendation, from brand mentions and citations to topical authority, conversational content, and technical foundations.
Because in AI-driven discovery, being present is one thing. Being recommended is another.
Growth strategies built on a small number of channels scale quickly until conditions change.
Rising acquisition costs, platform dependency, and fragile attribution models are exposing how vulnerable many performance engines have become. When algorithms shift, partners change terms, or costs spike, growth built on narrow foundations is the first to fail.
This session examines how growth models are being redesigned to reduce dependency and increase resilience. The focus is on building partner ecosystems that create incrementality rather than concentration, improving visibility into true contribution, and balancing short-term performance with long-term stability.
This is about deciding whether growth can withstand pressure, not just whether it looks strong in favourable conditions.
Traditional analytics show what customers do. They rarely show where customers struggle.
As journeys become more complex, the most damaging experience issues often appear long before conversion drops or complaints rise. Friction, hesitation, and confusion quietly undermine confidence while dashboards continue to look healthy.
This session looks at how behavioural insight is being used to surface where customers lose momentum, abandon decisions, or make avoidable mistakes. The focus is on identifying the moments that matter most and using those signals to prioritise fixes that improve experience and performance at the same time.
This is about seeing the experience from the customer’s perspective and acting on it before problems show up in the numbers.
Search still shapes demand, but it no longer behaves in ways leadership teams plan or budget for. Visibility is decoupling from traffic, and influence is declining long before performance drops appear in reporting.
This session examines how search is evolving in 2026 and what senior leaders must rethink as traditional SEO and attribution models lose reliability. The focus is on how retailers protect relevance, authority, and demand creation when clicks are no longer guaranteed.
Search is no longer just an acquisition engine. It has become a visibility, trust, and influence channel.
Acquisition has long been the engine of retail growth. In 2026, however, rising costs and increasing competition mean growth can no longer rely on acquisition alone.
For many retailers, the challenge is no longer simply reaching new customers, but ensuring the customers they win choose to come back again and again. Sustainable growth now depends on balancing efficient acquisition with strong repeat behaviour, meaningful customer relationships, and experiences that build long-term loyalty.
This keynote explores how leading brands are evolving their growth models beyond short-term transactions toward a more balanced approach: acquiring the right customers, understanding the signals that drive repeat visits, and designing customer experiences that strengthen connection over time.
Rather than focusing on more campaigns or deeper promotions, the session looks at how retailers are investing in the moments, behaviours, and signals that influence whether customers return, engage, and build lasting relationships with the brands they love.
This is a practical conversation about sustainable growth, where acquisition remains essential, but long-term success is built through loyalty, trust, and consistent customer value.
Woolworths MarketPlus has built the marketplace infrastructure behind BIG W Market and Everyday Market - and while global platforms dominate headlines, WMP is growing. This fireside chat explores what it takes to build a retailer-led marketplace that brands actually want to sell on, how seller onboarding is being reimagined, the retail media opportunity sitting inside 3P marketplaces, and what AI-driven commerce means for how products get discovered and bought.
Hotel Lobby to check in for Sailing in Paradise, Go Karting, and Golf.
If you are registered for Mixology Masterclass, Jet Boating, or Paint & Sip, please check in outside the ballroom and then proceed to the Terraces Restaurant for lunch.
Attendees for The Ultimate Team Cook Off should head directly outside towards the South East Lawn.
Get ready to shake things up in the most fun way possible with a Mixology Masterclass that’ll have you stirring, shaking, and sipping your way to cocktail greatness! Your very own cocktail Guru will guide you through the art of crafting top-notch drinks, teaching you the secrets behind popular cocktails and the magic of mixology.
Working in teams, you’ll embark on a creative mission to invent your own signature cocktail. With all the mixology secrets you’ve learned (and a few well-timed samples along the way), your inner cocktail artist will come to life.
But wait, there’s more! All your concoctions will be judged at the end, and the winning drink will earn the title of Best Cocktail. No pressure!
Step into a fast-paced, chef-led culinary showdown where competition meets connection, and unforgettable moments are made.
Teams go head-to-head against the clock to create a standout signature dish, using mystery ingredients revealed from the Wildcard Pantry. It’s a test of creativity, teamwork, and quick thinking — and the results are always bold, surprising, and seriously entertaining.
The grand finale?
Your creations are judged by the Sheraton Head Chef, bringing prestige, expert insight, and ultimate bragging rights.
Prepare for the Gold Coast’s most exhilarating water adventure! Step aboard the ONLY jet boating experience that dives straight into high-speed thrills—no slow build-up, just instant action! Brace yourself for heart-pounding spins, tight turns, and the kind of excitement that might just have you shouting (in pure joy, naturally) as you race across the waves. Once you’ve caught your breath and dried off a bit, it’s time to unwind with drinks and canapés at a stunning waterfront location. It's the perfect blend of adrenaline and relaxation, all served with a side of scenic views!
Dress code alert: keep in casual and comfortable. Perhaps bring a set of dry clothes – just remember you are going to get wet and wild!
Ready to unleash your inner Picasso? Join us for a 3-hour paint and sip session at the Sheraton Grand Mirage, where you'll get to sip wine, snack on nibbles, and (attempt to) create a masterpiece. Our team of expert artists will walk you through everything from beginner brushstrokes to advanced techniques, but don’t worry—we’ll leave plenty of room for you to go rogue.
By the end of the day, even if your “abstract” art looks like a toddler’s masterpiece, you’ll still leave with something you can proudly hang on your fridge.
Step aboard your very own private catamaran and get ready for an afternoon of sailing through the stunning Gold Coast Broadwater—your new personal playground. Surrounded by sparkling turquoise waters and breathtaking views, you’ll feel like you’ve just stepped into a postcard.
Sail the Gold Coast's magnificent waterways from Southport to Sovereign Islands, cruise past sensational superyachts, visit isolated islands and pristine beaches, experience the thrill of sailing in complete comfort, and if the wind strikes, we will 'raft up' for a party on the water.
It’s the perfect mix of relaxation, adventure, and laughs, all set against the best backdrop imaginable. So, hop aboard for an unforgettable day on the water!
Dress code alert: Swimmers and towel (if you plan to swim), jacket (for cooler days), sunglasses and sunscreen, and shoes that you can easily slip off.
Get ready to swing into action at the stunning RACV Royal Pines Resort for a nine-hole competition that promises laughs, some very serious friendly rivalry, and maybe a few golf swings that leave us all wondering what just happened.
You’ll be teamed up in squads of four, where golf lovers (and those just here for the fun) can unite for the most social game around—Ambrose! After your team's valiant efforts to conquer the course (or, you know, just pretending to know what you’re doing), join us for well-deserved drinks and the all-important awards ceremony. Who’s taking home the trophies for First Place, Longest Drive, and Nearest to the Pin? Spoiler alert: It’s anyone’s game!
Brace yourself to swing, sip, and socialise like a golfing pro... or at least look the part while you’re at it!
Dress Code Alert: Collared shirts only, no singlets or t-shirts, and please, no thongs (we’re not on a beach). Closed shoes only—leave your metal spikes at home, it’s a soft spike course.
Buckle up and get ready for the ride of your life with the only 3 Level Indoor Go Karting Centre on the Gold Coast! The fun doesn’t stop there with the track's outdoor section great for getting the knees in the breeze (weather permitting of course). Whether you’re a rookie or a seasoned speedster, this track will challenge even the most skilled drivers.
The track itself is 475m long and can be run rain hail or shine which makes it perfect for a Gold Coast wet weather activity! The go-karts can zoom up to a heart-racing 70 km/h, so hold on tight, things are about to get fast and furious.
Dress code alert: Closed flat shoes only—leave your flowing capes, dresses, and scarves at home.
Standard requirements for all drivers: maximum weight of 130kg, Zero alcohol and/or drugs and all drivers must be wearing enclosed footwear. All drivers with long hair to shoulder blades or below, will require a Shirtaclava (instead of the balaclava).
Dock & Dash: iMedia YOT Club Cocktail Evening with DoorDash
Day 3 begins with breakfast and barista coffee!
For more than a decade, retail supply chains were engineered for efficiency. Lean inventory, global sourcing, and just-in-time delivery created a model built for speed, scale, and margin.
But volatility has changed the equation.
Freight shocks, geopolitical disruption, shifting demand, and rising costs are exposing the fragility of systems designed for stability. As conditions become less predictable, the commercial relationship between manufacturers and retailers is being quietly renegotiated.
In this candid fireside conversation, Igor Vincetic, General Manager Singapore & Malaysia at Electrolux Group, joins a senior retail leader to explore what happens when the efficiency model begins to break.
Together they will examine how supply constraints reshape allocation decisions, how inventory risk is shared when demand softens, and what truly resilient trading partnerships look like in an unstable market.
Because when volatility becomes the norm, the supply chain is no longer just an operational system. It becomes a commercial strategy.
As assortments grow and categories expand, complexity becomes a hidden performance risk.
In high-choice, high-consideration environments, conversion loss is rarely caused by lack of demand. It happens when customers cannot make progress through too much information, too many options, or poorly structured paths.
This session examines how retailers manage choice at scale by reducing friction, prioritising relevance, and structuring experiences that help customers move forward without adding complexity.
Clarity is no longer a UX detail. It is a conversion strategy.
Customers rarely say why they leave. They just disappear.
As shoppers move across SMS, chat, reviews, and social messages, slow or absent responses are no longer tolerated. They are interpreted as disinterest.
This quickfire examines why response speed now directly impacts conversion and repeat business. Replying in minutes, not hours, has become a visible signal customers actively judge.
Speed is no longer an internal metric. It is a competitive advantage.
Trust is shaping demand earlier than most retailers realise. Reviews, responses and public interactions now influence decisions before paid media, search, or even a site visit.
Yet in many organisations, customer voice is still treated as reputation management rather than a commercial input.
In this Quickfire, Birdeye examines how trust signals influence demand formation, where customer feedback reveals risk before performance metrics move, and what changes when reviews and responses start informing real business decisions.
The challenge for retailers is clear: trust compounds faster than advertising, but only when customer voice is structured as a growth lever rather than simply monitored.
Agentic AI is changing how customers research, compare, and buy. The risk is not just a shifting journey. It is that the customer relationship moves to a generic AI layer in the process.
This quickfire explores how PUMA is responding by deploying a brand-owned AI sales agent, designed to replicate in-store guidance, keep customers engaged within their own ecosystem, and capture incremental revenue without handing control to third-party platforms.
For PUMA, the question is no longer whether AI will mediate the journey.
It is how to ensure your brand is the one shaping the decision.
Take a break and refuel with morning tea.
A facilitated working session where retailers pressure-test real decisions with peers. Topics are curated to surface genuine tension between defensible opposing positions. The goal is clarity, not consensus. Retailers leave with better judgment, not answers.
A facilitated working session where retailers pressure-test real decisions with peers. Topics are curated to surface genuine tension between defensible opposing positions. The goal is clarity, not consensus. Retailers leave with better judgment, not answers.
Product discovery is increasingly happening before customers ever reach a retailer’s site. Social platforms, search engines, marketplaces, and AI tools are surfacing answers instantly, often without a click. This Retail Pressure Test tests two competing views: invest heavily in content and brand presence to win discovery organically, or accept that visibility increasingly belongs to paid ecosystems and optimise for it. Both approaches can drive traffic and sales. Both reshape how retailers allocate marketing investment. Come ready to test whether your discovery strategy is building long-term advantage or simply paying to stay visible.
Most retailers know their conversion rate. Almost none of them know how much their payments setup is costing them.
Approval rates, local payment methods, and checkout friction are shaping revenue every single day, whether anyone is actively managing them or not. Most payments strategies were set once, optimised for cost and reliability, and haven't been seriously revisited since.
The retailers treating payments as infrastructure are leaving money on the table. The question is how much, and whether the complexity of fixing it is worth what's being lost.
This session puts two positions on the table: keep payments simple and cost-controlled, or treat the payment layer as a commercial system that deserves the same attention as any other growth lever in the business.
Every retailer in this room has an approval rate they haven't optimised, a market where local payment methods are underperforming, or a checkout flow losing customers nobody is tracking. The opportunity is there. Most businesses just haven't picked it up yet.
Loyalty programs are consuming budget, margin, and IT resources across the industry, yet most retailers cannot confidently say the return justifies it. This Retail Pressure Test tests two competing views: double down on traditional rewards that drive scale and repeat purchase, or rebuild loyalty around relevance, value exchange, and trust that customers cannot get from a competitor’s app. Both approaches can work. Both carry real implications for margin, retention, and long-term customer value. Come with a view on what your program is actually delivering and be prepared to have it tested.
Retailers have invested heavily in data and automation to deliver one-to-one personalisation. Yet many teams are discovering that complexity, cost, and operational strain can outweigh the gains. This Retail Pressure Test tests two competing views: pursue true one-to-one personalisation powered by AI and real-time data, or focus on fewer high-impact segments that deliver clarity and measurable results. Both approaches promise better customer engagement. Both reshape how teams invest in data, marketing, and automation. Come ready to test whether personalisation in your business is driving real value or simply adding complexity.
Omnichannel retail now means feeding your own site, marketplaces, retail media networks, and social channels with a constant flow of content on tighter budgets and faster timelines. Most governance models were built for a simpler environment and haven't kept up.
The result is familiar. Assets rebuilt from scratch. Channel teams bypassing approval because waiting costs more than the risk. Brand consistency eroding quietly while everyone debates process.
This session puts two positions on the table: tighten centralised governance to protect consistency and efficiency, or give channel teams the autonomy to move faster and own the consequences.
Both have worked. Both have cost retailers more than expected. Come ready to be honest about which problem your business actually has, because most teams are solving the wrong one.
Most retailers don't have a data ownership problem on paper. They have one in practice. The central team controls the model but can't move fast enough. The business units move fast but work from different numbers and reach different conclusions. Somewhere in the middle, decisions get delayed, duplicated, or made on instinct because getting the right data takes too long.
This session puts two positions on the table: centralise data ownership for consistency and control, or push accountability to the teams closest to the customer and the commercial decision.
The question isn't which model is correct. It's whether your current structure is actually speeding decisions up or quietly slowing them down.
AI shopping agents are rapidly changing how customers discover and purchase products. Instead of browsing storefronts, shoppers increasingly rely on AI to recommend what to buy and where to buy it. This Retail Pressure Test tests two competing views: embrace AI agents as a powerful new acquisition channel, or treat them cautiously as intermediaries that could erode brand control and margin. Both futures are plausible. Both carry major implications for pricing, merchandising, and customer relationships. Come ready to test whether AI agents represent your next growth engine or your next margin challenge.
Last-click attribution was never the full picture. Most retailers knew that and used it anyway. MMM is now back in the conversation as a more credible alternative, but a harder question is emerging: how much should it actually control?
This session puts two positions on the table: use MMM as the primary engine guiding where marketing budget goes, or use it as a guardrail that informs decisions without replacing instinct and experimentation.
The risk with the first is over-indexing on a model that reflects the past. The risk with the second is using it as cover for decisions you were going to make anyway. Come ready to be honest about which one your team is actually doing.
Physical stores are under pressure to justify their role in the retail model.
Some are being optimised for fulfilment speed, cost, and proximity to support online demand. Others are being reimagined as experience-led environments that build brand and drive engagement. Few are doing both well.
This session brings that choice into focus by pressure-testing two opposing approaches: stores as fulfilment hubs versus stores as experience destinations. It will examine the trade-offs in cost, labour, space, and return, and explore what happens when retailers try to balance both within the same footprint. Both paths carry real implications for margin and long-term competitiveness. Come ready to test whether your store strategy is building advantage, or eroding it
Generative AI is transforming how retail content gets created.
What once required studios and approvals can now be produced instantly and at scale, enabling retailers to generate imagery, video, and personalised creative across every channel.
The upside is clear: more content, faster, drives visibility, relevance, and conversion.
But the trade-off is harder to ignore.
Without proper oversight, AI-generated content can misrepresent products, erode brand standards, and create liability through returns, complaints, and margin pressure.
Retailers now face a real decision: scale AI to maximise speed and reach, or constrain it to protect accuracy, trust, and long-term value.
This session pressure-tests where velocity drives impact, where it introduces risk, and what level of control is required to get the balance right.
Free, easy returns drove online conversion for years. They still do. But the cost profile has changed and so has customer behaviour. A growing share of returns are not genuine changes of mind. They are the policy working exactly as designed, for customers who were never going to keep the product.
This session puts two positions on the table: keep returns generous to protect conversion and customer confidence, or tighten controls to reduce abuse, logistics cost, and margin pressure.
Loosen the policy and you fund behaviour that erodes profitability. Tighten it and you risk penalising customers who had no intention of abusing it. Most retailers are currently running a policy designed for a different customer. Come ready to test whether yours still makes commercial sense.
Every retailer in this room is declining legitimate customers. Most don't know how many or what it's costing them. Fraud controls are set to protect margin, but when they're too aggressive they create a different problem: real customers blocked at checkout, abandoned carts, and revenue that never shows up in any fraud report because it was never counted as a loss.
The tension runs both ways. Loosen controls and fraud exposure grows. Tighten them and good customers pay the price.
This session puts two positions on the table: tighten fraud controls to protect margin and minimise chargebacks, or pull back restrictions to protect checkout flow and stop penalising legitimate customers.
There's no clean answer. But most retailers are currently sitting on one side of this trade-off without having made a deliberate choice about it. Come ready to find out where your line actually sits, and whether it's costing you more than you think.
Amazon, Temu, and Shein are resetting what customers expect from price, assortment, and delivery speed. The pressure is real and it's not easing. Many retailers are responding by competing harder on price and operational efficiency. Others have concluded that race is unwinnable and are betting on brand, experience, and trust instead.
This session puts two positions on the table: match global competitors on price and efficiency, or build the parts of your business they structurally can't replicate.
The harder question isn't which strategy sounds right. It's whether the one your business is currently running is a deliberate choice or just what's happened by default.
AI is no longer just a support tool. In many retail environments it now matches or outperforms human agents in product discovery, delivering more consistent, more personalised, and more scalable interactions. Most retailers are already moving this way and the results are hard to argue with.
But not all moments are equal.
When customers are browsing, AI guides and converts at scale. When something goes wrong, expectations shift fast. Customers want resolution, not a process. Getting that moment wrong doesn't just lose the interaction. It loses the customer.
This session puts two positions on the table: build a service model that scales on AI with humans as the exception, or design deliberately around the moments where removing the human costs you more than keeping one.
Where you draw that line is a commercial decision, not a technology one.
Retailers make growth decisions based on what their own platforms report. The problem is those signals are bounded by a single business, a single channel, and a single customer relationship.
Transaction data at scale tells a different story. Where Australian consumer spending is shifting. Which segments are reallocating spend. And what changes appear well before churn surfaces in a retailer’s own reporting.
These shifts are not abstract. They are happening now, and retailers relying on partial visibility are already making decisions on signals that are out of date.
In this session, Mastercard joins a leading retailer to examine what that macro view is revealing. Where customers are already moving. Which assumptions behind current growth strategies are becoming harder to defend. And what those signals indicate about which brands consumers will trust enough to act on their behalf as AI agents begin intermediating the purchase.
This is not a payments session. It is a commercial intelligence session built on data that sits outside any single retailer’s visibility.
Retail strategies are often built on what customers say they want. Their behaviour tells a different story.
In this quickfire, Behamics explores the behavioural patterns that sit beneath profitable and unprofitable purchases. Drawing on behavioural science, the session examines how bias, habit, and uncertainty influence buying behaviour in ways traditional research often misses.
This is a challenge to how retailers interpret customer insight. Better commercial outcomes come from understanding how people actually behave, not from optimising around what they claim they will do.
Agentic AI will fundamentally change retail. But will it liberate retailers to focus on what matters, or will it commoditise brands and erode the customer relationship entirely?
This live debate presents two opposing visions of retail's AI-powered future:
Position 1 - The Optimist:
AI agents will create retail's golden age. Retailers will finally escape the noise of acquisition and conversion optimization, focusing instead on product quality, brand distinctiveness, and value delivery. AI will reward the best, not just the loudest.
Position 2 - The Skeptic:
AI agents will commoditise retail. As machines choose products based on data and optimization, brand loyalty will erode, differentiation will collapse, and retailers will compete in a race to the bottom on price and features. The customer relationship dies.
Through structured argument and audience Q&A, this debate will surface the real tensions, trade-offs, and uncertainties retailers must navigate as AI becomes the interface between brand and customer.
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