What you’ll learn:
For more than a decade, retailers and brands have chased the idea of “seamless” shopping by connecting channels, whether it’s web, mobile, social and chat. Each new interface promised to fix fragmentation, yet customers still find themselves repeating searches, rebuilding carts, and restarting conversations. The missing piece has never been the number of channels. It has always been the loss of context.
Context is what allows a shopper’s intent, preferences and stage of the shopping journey to move across channels, e.g., starting a conversation on the mobile app and then move it to a messaging chat like WhatsApp, without loss of information. It means shoppers can fluidly move from one channel to another without having to repeat information or restart their shopping flow.
When context disappears, however, continuity breaks — negatively affecting a potential conversion and loyalty.
For enterprises that want to take advantage of the immense potential of conversational commerce, the paradigm shifts from channel-specific to channel-agnostic. This is enabled by a unified commerce platform that consolidates all data in one place, effectively capturing customer context and intent across all channels, preserving the meaning, memory and flow of all conversations.
The next frontier of conversational commerce: Context and continuity
The concept of conversational commerce was an early attempt to create natural interactions online. Chatbots, messaging apps and voice assistants brought new ways to shop, but each interaction lived in isolation. Switching from one device or app to another meant starting over. The result was a fragile commerce experience: If the customer stops the conversation midway, capturing intent in another channel isn’t possible. The opportunity for true conversion is gone.
This gap has business consequences. Every time a shopper has to repeat what they want, friction increases and conversion drops. Research shows that 73% of consumers switch brands after a poor experience, while cart abandonment continues to cost retailers billions annually. Customers expect shopping journeys that feel continuous, not repetitive.
As artificial intelligence begins to power more of the shopping process, the need for continuity becomes even more critical. McKinsey projects that agentic commerce (i.e. AI systems acting on behalf of consumers) could generate between $3 and $5 trillion in orchestrated global revenue by 2030. These intelligent agents depend on persistent context to interpret intent, make decisions and maintain trust. Businesses that cannot provide it risk becoming invisible to both people and the agents shopping for them.
commercetools Cora: The next step toward context-aware shopping
Cora, commercetools’ AI-native shopping companion, was designed to close this gap. Built on the same unified commerce foundation that powers enterprises globally, Cora creates the connective layer that keeps every interaction whether on web, mobile or messaging consistent and alive.
Where traditional chatbots reset with each session, Cora remembers. It carries conversation history, cart state and brand tone across channels so that shoppers can start on one device and finish on another without losing context. This continuity transforms fragmented interactions into a single, fluid experience.
Cora’s initial capabilities include:
AI-first product discovery: Shoppers can describe what they want naturally, and Cora interprets vague or conversational requests into personalized product results.
Omnichannel continuity: Cart contents, history and preferences travel seamlessly between devices and channels.
Brand-controlled experience: Businesses retain full control over identity, data and governance, ensuring that every interaction reflects their brand.
For shoppers, this means fewer restarts, faster checkouts and experiences that feel human. For enterprises, it means increased revenue and loyalty. By preserving context, businesses reduce drop-off, protect margins and gain a foundation for the agentic era.
The path forward
Commerce is shifting from channel-based strategies to context-based relationships. Consumers are beginning to ask AI systems not only what to buy but where and how to buy it. As those systems become capable of acting on intent, continuity will define which brands are chosen and which are forgotten.
Cora represents the first tangible step toward that future. By keeping context continuous and experiences connected, it shows how enterprises can prepare for a world where shopping is orchestrated by agents but owned by the brands that understand their customers best.
commercetools Cora will be available soon! Want to preview this solution? Contact us for a product demo.
In the last decade, Kemba has upleveled the communications blueprint of a broad portfolio of organizations, primarily early stage to late stage startups – ranging from fintech to consumer, B2B to artificial intelligence – to big tech enterprises, as well as those in health, beauty, and higher education industries.
Mary Rebecca is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at commercetools, focused on B2C. With over a decade of experience across product and marketing teams, she excels at crafting GTM strategies and positioning products to drive growth and deliver value.