About 30 retail executives attend, including committee chair Jung Ji-young

Industry leaders agree on need for collective response to AI agents

KAIST professor Kim Min-ki shares survival strategies for agentic commerce era

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry headquarters. [KCCI]
The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry headquarters. [KCCI]

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry held its 41st Distribution Committee meeting Friday at the Grand Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Seoul, under the theme "Agentic AI Era: Changes and Future Competitiveness in the Retail Industry."

About 30 people attended, including KCCI Senior Vice President Kim Jong-il, Distribution Committee Chair Jung Ji-young, who also serves as chief executive of Hyundai Department Store, along with heads of major domestic retail companies, Korea Distribution Association President Choi Ja-young, and executives from retail industry associations.

Attendees agreed that intensifying competition among global platforms and a rapidly shifting consumer environment made developing countermeasures urgent.

Participants took particular note of a growing trend in which consumers are using AI agents — personal assistant tools that help with everyday conversation and schedule management, such as Meta's recently launched Muse in the United States — extensively for shopping tasks like product search and price comparison.

The group reached a consensus that "agentic commerce," in which AI actively intervenes in the consumer purchasing journey, is becoming a reality, and that the domestic industry must reform its practices and mount a collective response.

Kim Min-ki, a professor at KAIST's College of Business, delivered the keynote address. "In the era of agentic commerce, the key is understanding the mechanisms by which AI analyzes information and makes purchasing decisions, and then optimizing your own business environment and infrastructure as quickly as possible," Kim said.

Kim outlined three priorities for proactive action — converting on-site data into assets, building AI-linked transaction infrastructure, and integrating online and offline services. Kim stressed that "companies must organize their data so AI can quickly grasp product and inventory information, and connect their retail systems and AI infrastructure in an organic way."

Distribution Committee Chair Jung said, "In the agentic AI era, the true competitive edge for companies will be the ability to anticipate customers' daily needs and deliver differentiated experiences." Jung added that individual companies face inherent limits on their own, and that the committee would take the lead in sharing infrastructure-building efforts and best practices in AI adoption to help the industry find a path forward together.

Lee Hee-won, head of the KCCI's Distribution and Logistics Promotion Institute, said the chamber would "swiftly investigate and share AI commerce trends and actively support the industry ecosystem's growth together, including by hosting relevant seminars."


keg@heraldcorp.com