Marketplaces — the ‘ Old Russian Post’ of the Future 📦

Marketplaces — the “Russian Post” of the Future 📦

Our series about AI gradually taking over the internet has a new episode. This time, it is about online retail.

The Russian SME Corporation shared some intriguing figures. Do we trust them? No. Although the post did not link to the research, it is easy to find online. What really bothered me was the bold headline, “74% of Russians have made a purchase based on an AI recommendation.” The sample of 1,500 respondents included only people who had already used AI-powered search. Still, the results do support a few conclusions.

Among the surveyed AI-search users, 74% had already bought products or ordered services following an AI recommendation. The most common choices were consumer technology and electronics at 69%, medical services at 50%, clothing and footwear at 46%, and groceries at 44%.

For now, the model looks familiar: AI recommends something and then sends the buyer to a marketplace. Some 32% of users always follow links from AI answers to retailers’ websites, while another 59% do so occasionally. Interestingly, 71% are willing to try agentic shopping, where AI not only finds a product but also completes the entire purchase journey. Yet only 12% are ready to let an agent make a purchase without their final confirmation.

I have already tried an experiment like that. I connected an agent to Ozon through Playwright and, for fun, asked it to buy a pack of toilet paper. The agent succeeded, the order arrived the next day, and my 🍑 was saved. Then Ozon blocked my account for a month 😂

On the one hand, you can understand the marketplaces’ position. Bots create load, scrape data, and make it harder to control the customer journey. On the other hand, this creates an interesting paradox: AI is already bringing them customers, while they are shutting AI out more aggressively.

In the longer term, I think AI systems could take over the entire front end of online retail. A person will give a task to a single agent, which will search for offers, compare prices, check reviews, and place the order. Shoppers may simply no longer need the separate storefronts of Ozon, Wildberries, and Yandex Market.

Marketplaces would then become infrastructure: fulfilment, payments, and so on. In other words, they would become the “Russian Post” of the future — technology-driven, fast, and invisible to the end customer. Those that survive, that is 🔪

For Ozon shareholders, this raises an uncomfortable question: can the company remain a growth business if it eventually loses its direct relationship with the customer? This is not investment advice — just a bit of foresight to think about.

This is where the futurism ends and the practical work begins. Traffic from LLMs is still limited, but that is clearly where things are heading. Online retailers should not throw every gate open to agents. They should test selected categories and products, ideally alongside GEO — generative engine optimization for brands and content appearing in AI-generated answers.

I know several strong teams working on GEO. Together, we can build a pilot, test the hypotheses, and work out how to prepare a business for a world in which the customer talks not to your storefront, but to their own AI agent.

And if you have managed to buy something through an agent too, tell me immediately. I am ready to ask for your autograph 😍