# The five-year retail playbook: how to navigate the journey to true agentic merchandising

DevFeed: [The five-year retail playbook: how to navigate the journey to true agentic merchandising](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-five-year-retail-playbook-how-to-navigate-the-journey-to-true-agentic-merchandising-79188.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.uipath.com/blog/industry-solutions/five-year-retail-playbook-how-to-navigate-agentic-journey>)

Author: Tom Summerfield - blog

Published: 2026-01-12T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [UiPath RSS Feed](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/uipath-rss-feed.md>)

Topics: [Agentic AI](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/what-is-agentic-ai.md>), [AI for customer service automation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-for-customer-service-automation.md>), [human review](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/human-review.md>), [engineering-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-leadership.md>)

Tags: [agentic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agentic.md>), [ai-agent](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-agent.md>), [automation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation.md>), [industry-solutions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/industry-solutions.md>), [retail](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/retail.md>), [roadmap](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/roadmap.md>)

## AI overview

The article outlines a five-year roadmap for retailers to adopt agentic merchandising in pricing and inventory. It recommends building data and team readiness first, then introducing AI recommendations and limited automated decisions with guardrails and human review. Later stages expand the agents' scope, governance, and coordination while changing roles and measures of performance.

## Source excerpt

Retail leaders know that true transformation rarely happens overnight. Get the clear five-year roadmap to build trust, scale agentic merchandising, and reshape pricing and inventory decisions.