“As grocery retailers scale their ecommerce and fulfillment operations, many are still managing picking, delivery, and labor across disconnected systems, creating unnecessary complexity for store teams and inconsistent customer experiences,” the company said in a Tuesday (May 12) blog post .

With that in mind, Instacart says it has added new delivery management software for retailer-owned fleets to its Fulfillment Pro offering, as well as improved “enhanced enterprise-grade” picking capabilities for store employees.

“Retailers have made real investments in their ecommerce programs, and they need fulfillment tools that can scale with them,” Blake Wallace, Instacart’s vice president of retail partnerships, said in the release.

“Fulfillment Pro brings picking, labor, and last-mile delivery into one system – giving retailers more control over their operations while helping them run more efficiently and deliver better experiences for their customers.”

Instacart is making these changes at a time when consumers are increasingly doing their grocery buying through virtual channels.

As covered here earlier this year, research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that shoppers feeling high levels of financial stress spent an average of $109 on their most recent grocery purchase, versus $95 among low-stress shoppers. This result indicates fewer trips and more deliberate planning, rather than looser spending discipline.

“Digital channels amplify this behavior,” PYMNTS wrote. “Financially stressed shoppers appear to favor online grocery purchases for the control they offer, including easier price comparisons and access to promotions. In-store grocery shopping still plays a role, but the growth momentum is clearly digital for this group.”

The research also found these shoppers were more likely to patronize Walmart than Amazon. The overall trend towards online grocery buying, the report added, “reflects a broader shift toward deliberate spending, consolidation and value orientation.”

PYMNTS wrote last week about Instacart’s latest earnings, which show that the company is turning a decade of grocery data into an artificial intelligence system that plans meals, builds shoppers’ baskets and predicts what they might have overlooked.

“With 1.6 billion lifetime orders and a fulfillment network rooted in physical stores, Instacart is building what its CEO Chris Rogers called the gold standard of agentic grocery AI,” that report said. “Instacart runs on three engines, including a consumer marketplace, an enterprise platform for retailers and an advertising ecosystem for brands. Each is growing — and more importantly, growing each other.”

New research from the latest edition of PYMNTS Intelligence’s exclusive Agentic AI Report shows that Americans are increasingly comfortable letting artificial intelligence (AI) take over their carts. More than half of U.S. consumers already use AI in the buying process, making it the most popular use case for the technology today.

It’s not just about asking AI what to buy anymore. Many consumers are open to letting autonomous agents handle the entire transaction. Nearly half say they’d consider letting an AI assistant shop for groceries, and 44% would trust one to pick out gifts, according to previous PYMNTS Intelligence research. The appeal is obvious: offloading time-consuming decisions and errands to software that never gets tired.

That convenience can be a slippery slope.

“Consumers will be lured by the simplicity of having a machine shop for them or do difficult planning tasks like travel and big-ticket purchases,” Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall by Incogni, said in an interview. “Each step along the process will seem like a logical next step: ‘as long as I am researching this for you, would you like me to purchase it for you?’”

Agentic commerce has come a long way in the last year. In January, Google launched its Universal Commerce Protocol, an open-source standard designed by the giant tech company and industry partners, to enable AI-driven, agentic commerce. It has now introduced agentic commerce through Etsy and Wayfair, with plans to add Shopify, Target and Walmart.

However, major concerns still linger. Agentic commerce involves handing over a lot of information to the AI platforms and payment companies supporting those transactions. For agents to be able to make purchases, the Visas and American Expresses of the world need to know a lot about the people they’re acting on behalf of. Shoppers have their doubts. Almost all (95%) consumers have at least one concern about agentic commerce. Those worries range from simple mistakes like buying the wrong item to higher-stakes issues like identity theft.

Those anxieties aren’t coming out of nowhere. People had enough security concerns even before agentic AI was introduced. In fact, PYMNTS Intelligence finds that nearly one in five consumers have been scammed in the last five years. That figure is even higher for the most digitally connected generations: 22% of Generation Z and 24% of millennials. Now, agents come with a whole new set of risks.

“Many AI systems rely on multiple APIs and vendors,” David B. Hoppe, the founder and managing partner at technology-focused Gamma Law, told PYMNTS. “Each integration increases vulnerabilities and complicates accountability for breaches or misuse … Even ‘anonymized’ data becomes highly identifiable when combined across sources, enabling granular profiling that may [lead to] unfair targeting concerns.”

Consumers and merchants alike could grant agents unprecedented access. And if that access goes unchecked, the possibilities are concerning.

Still, many people want to trust agentic commerce, so they’re willing to negotiate. The technology promises to take the work of shopping off people’s hands, an appealing proposition for anyone who’s had to navigate their way through a department store during the holiday season or spend precious minutes of their lives deciding between nearly identical jars of pasta sauce. Half of U.S. consumers say they’d trust agentic commerce if they knew that there were fraud protections in place.

“Consumers are pragmatic and will trade data for a time-back ROI, but only if they feel in control,” Albert Roux, executive vice president of product and identity at Microblink, told PYMNTS.

Payment giants are paying close attention to those trust concerns. Take Visa, for instance. The company recently helped design Stripe and Tempo’s Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) and extended that protocol to card payments on its global network and Visa Acceptance Platform in an effort to provide secure autonomous agent payments. Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s senior vice president and global head of growth, recently explained in an interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster that the technology needs “continuous validation of agent behavior” from humans to get people to trust it.

Similarly, American Express chairman and CEO Stephen J. Squeri wrote in a March letter to shareholders that having the right security measures in place is “of paramount importance” for agentic commerce to succeed. Mastercard, for its part, has partnered with PayPal to provide secure, verified agentic AI payment options.

The goal is to ensure that even if a machine is making the purchase, there’s still oversight, verification and accountability behind the scenes. The stakes are high. People are just starting to form their opinions about agentic commerce, and trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild.

“If AI is just a more sophisticated way to target and sell, that will erode trust quickly,” Trulioo CTO Hal Lonas explained to PYMNTS. “The real opportunity, and the line consumers will draw, is whether the agent is actually solving problems for them or just creating new ones.”

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.

Simon was speaking during the first quarter earnings call for the company, which owns shopping, dining, entertainment and mixed-use destinations across North America, Europe and Asia.

“What’s interesting when talking to the leasing team is retailers are now wanting to talk about their 2027, 2028, 2029 expirations, which historically might have been more of a luxury tenant phenomenon, who think, much like we do, in terms of decades, not quarter to quarter,” Simon said. “We’re actually hearing from legacy retailers in our existing portfolio, non-luxury, that actually want to start having those conversations because I think they understand this pipeline too and the interest in our space.”

As of the end of the first quarter, March 31, Simon Property Group had recorded year-over-year increases in its U.S. malls and premium outlets operating statistics, according to a Monday earnings release.

Over the year, occupancy rose 10 basis points to 96%, base minimum rent per square foot increased 5.2% to $61.99, and reported retailer sales per square foot rose 11.8% to $819.

U.S. malls and premium outlets accounted for 77.1% of Simon Property Group’s net operating income during the first quarter, according to a supplemental presentation released Monday.

Simon said during the call that in the first quarter, the company signed more than 1,100 leases totaling over 4.7 million square feet, with about 25% of its leasing volume being new deals. He added that the company has completed more than 75% of its 2026 expirations, which puts it ahead of last year’s pace, and that the pipeline of deals is “significantly larger” than it was at this time last year.

“Occupancy gains, increased shopper traffic and higher retailer sales drove strong cash flow growth in the quarter, reflecting solid fundamentals across all our platforms, the resilience of the consumer, and the strength and breadth of tenant demand we have for our centers,” Simon said. “Retailer demand remains broad-based, spanning new and legacy retailers across a wide range of categories in all of our platforms and geographies.”

The modern storefront is increasingly becoming a technology platform designed to merge physical commerce with digital engagement in real time.

That evolution is showing up in both retailer spending plans and consumer expectations. PYMNTS recently reported that major chains including Walmart, Target and Dollar General are investing heavily in store remodels aimed at strengthening connections between physical stores and digital commerce ecosystems. Though some of the initiatives are cosmetic in nature, other prongs of the strategies tie in to a broader shift toward stores functioning as fulfillment hubs. A melding of in-store visits and digital features yield myriad data collection points that help fine tune operations.

PYMNTS Intelligence data shows consumers are increasingly embracing what the company calls “Click-and-Mortar™” shopping experiences, where digital tools are integrated directly into physical retail journeys. Nearly one-third of U.S. consumers now actively engage in digitally assisted in-store or pickup-based shopping experiences, while Click-and-Mortar™ shoppers have grown 35% since 2020.

The data suggests that retailers are responding to a shopper who increasingly expects stores to operate like extensions of mobile apps. Customer satisfaction rises 65% for shoppers using digitally assisted in-store experiences compared to traditional in-store shopping. Consumers are also demanding consistency between online and physical shopping environments, particularly around payments, promotions and inventory visibility.

Digital Commerce Infrastructure

The remodel wave underway across major chains reflects those expectations. PYMNTS reported that Walmart alone has been engaged in a multiyear remodeling effort, including upgrades to hundreds of supercenters and smaller-format stores. Target has announced plans to remodel more than 300 stores while also expanding its physical footprint. Dollar General has similarly outlined an extensive real estate strategy that includes remodels and new openings intended to strengthen ties between its physical and digital operations.

Store redesigns are intended to improve pickup efficiency, optimize product placement and create smoother transitions between online browsing and physical fulfillment. In some cases, retailers are redesigning backrooms specifically to support buy online, pick up in-store activity and faster order staging.

Those physical upgrades dovetail with broader changes in digital shopping behavior. As we’ve noted in past research, in collaboration with Visa Acceptance Solutions, 85% of U.S. consumers now regularly use multiple digital shopping features. Consumers increasingly expect mobile-compatible sites, stored order histories, digital coupons, preferred payment options and easy-to-navigate shopping carts regardless of whether they shop online or inside stores. Rather than serving solely as a transaction point, stores are becoming digitally connected environments that feed data into inventory systems, loyalty programs and personalization engines.

Real-Time Data as Retail Currency

At the center of the transition is real-time data. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 73% of retail shoppers want digitally updated inventory visibility. Consumers increasingly expect retailers to know what is available, where it is located and whether it can be fulfilled immediately.

That demand has implications far beyond convenience. Real-time inventory visibility supports faster fulfillment, reduces failed pickup experiences and enables more personalized promotions tied to local buying patterns. It also strengthens the foundation for retail media networks, which rely heavily on shopper behavior, loyalty and transaction data to deliver targeted advertising and offers.

The more digitally connected the store becomes, the more valuable that data ecosystem becomes. Retailers can condense payments, loyalty participation, mobile engagement and inventory patterns into a single operational view designed to increase conversion rates and basket sizes.

As the New York Times (NYT) reported Monday (May 11), companies such as Target, Walmart and Dollar General are among the chains investing more in brick-and-mortar retail.

Altogether, the largest retailers in the U.S. are expected to spend $20 billion this decade on remodeling their stores, the report added.

Nearly half of that spending comes from Walmart. The NYT points out that the retail giant has done well as it has rebranded as a place to find trendier products and clothing along with groceries and other essentials. The company began a $9 billion remodeling project in 2023, and said recently it is upgrading 650 additional supercenters and smaller stores.

As PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster has argued, Walmart’s storefront is the company’s most irreplaceable asset.

“Roughly 100 million people walk into Walmart for the most frequent, most habitual, most non-discretionary purchase in retail: their groceries,” Webster wrote earlier this year. “That foot traffic is massive. But it’s also their greatest Achilles’ Heel.”

Few people who visit Walmart to get groceries purchase anything else, that report added. While the company’s foot traffic is enormous, its slice of the retail basket is narrow. PYMNTS Intelligence data has found that Walmart’s share of retail is declining in almost every category other than food.

Meanwhile, Target announced in March that it plans to remodel more than 130 stores this year — in addition to opening 300 new stores by 2035 — as part of its $5 billion capital investment plan.

The NYT report offers a glimpse at what those renovations look like, describing Target’s overhaul of a store in Paramus, N.J.: new lighting, an expanded grocery section, and changes to backrooms to make it easier for workers to drop off items for in-store pickup.

Also in March, Dollar General said it is planning an extensive real estate strategy that includes opening around 450 new stores and completing thousands of remodels.

“Executives said the goal is to strengthen the connection between the company’s physical footprint and its digital ecosystem,” PYMNTS wrote at the time.

The NTY report touches on the same idea: remodeling efforts to promote in-store visits can also encourage consumers to shop virtually.

“The in-store experience is still important for shaping the e-commerce brand,” David Marcotte, an analyst at research firm Kantar Retail IQ, told the newspaper. “Remodels are almost always the best way to go.”

The proposed class action lawsuit accuses Nike of not refunding the costs it passed onto consumers in higher prices in response to President Donald Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs, Reuters reported Friday (May 8).

The plaintiffs argue that the company should not be allowed to keep “significant” refunds it can expect following a Supreme Court ruling which declared the tariffs illegal.

According to Reuters, Nike has said it paid around $1 billion in tariffs on imported items after the White House imposed new tariffs. Consumers say the company increased prices on some shoes by $5 to $10 and $2 to $10 on some apparel items to cover the costs.

“Nike has made no legally binding commitment to return tariff-related overcharges to the consumers who actually paid them,” the complaint reads. “Unless restrained by this court, Nike stands to recover the same tariff payments twice — once from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal government through tariff refunds.”

A spokesperson for Nike declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS.

As covered here last year, Nike was among a group of several “blue chip companies” that “reported 9- to 10-figure headwinds due to tariffs” in the latter half of the year.

Other companies facing legal action from customers seeking tariff refunds include FedEx, Costco and RayBans-maker EssilorLuxottica.

Meanwhile, research by PYMNTS Intelligence cataloged the impact of tariffs on businesses throughout the past year.

For example, surveys taken in September found that 48% of product executives said tariffs represented a long-term U.S. policy direction, while another 45% described them as a mix of short- and long-term measures. Just 7% viewed them as temporary.

Later in the year, 47% of goods product leaders said tariffs were mostly or completely negative for business finances, while 88% were still anticipating supply chain disruptions. However, around two-thirds of goods firms and 80% of services firms said tariffs could bolster supply chain resilience over time.

“The data reflects a shift from reaction to normalization,” PYMNTS wrote last month. “Tariffs are now embedded in planning assumptions rather than treated as external shocks. The next phase is less certain. Firms have adjusted, but the question is whether those adjustments can support renewed growth and not simply continued defense.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cahillane said the packaged food company’s strategy includes price cuts on items that had become expensive, more promotions, and new, smaller package sizes with lower prices.

“Consumers are literally running out of money toward the end of the month,” Cahillane said. “Being there with the right offering at the right time has never been more important.”

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote in an article posted in January that for a growing share of consumers, affordability conversations revolve around covering day-to-day expenses rather than preferences such as vacations, home renovations, newer cars or savings.

Citing PYMNTS Intelligence research, Webster said 87% of consumers report that rising prices on everyday items is a challenge.

“The biggest components of household budgets — housing, healthcare, insurance, utilities, transportation and debt service — have reset higher over the past several years and show little evidence of reverting,” Webster wrote. “These are not expenses consumers can easily comparison-shop, negotiate away or substitute out of.”

PYMNTS Intelligence’s February “Generational Pulse Report” found that the share of consumers who said the experience financial stress when buying groceries rose to 89% in January, a figure that was five percentage points higher than the 84% who said that in October.

In addition, 51% of consumers said that managing their daily living costs was challenging, according to the report.

It was reported in February that not only Kraft Heinz but also fellow packaged food giants General Mills and PepsiCo were cutting prices to woo cautious consumers.

The report cited Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that consumers have cut their spending as grocery prices have climbed 26% in the past five years.

PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said in February that his company was seeing “a middle- and low-income consumer that continues to be stretched and choiceful.”

At the time, PepsiCo was planning to make “surgical” price cuts of up to 15% on certain snack brands after seeing its North American sales dip 2% in 2025.

The tools help merchants onboard faster, manage their video content, enhance their photos, launch branded websites and automate marketing campaigns, the company said in a Monday (May 4) press release.

DoorDash’s new self-serve onboarding experience automatically surfaces details such as photos, store hours and menu items from a merchant’s online presence, so the merchant can simply review and edit the details instead of entering them manually. The experience can help merchants launch 35% faster, according to the release.

The company’s new Video Library helps merchants upload, organize and manage their video content. This tool allows merchants to tag menu items in videos so customers can order directly from what they see, continually refresh their storage page with new content, and track performance metrics.

DoorDash’s new photo editing experience features three AI-powered modes: AI Retouch to improve existing menu photos, AI Replate to match food with appropriate dinnerware and other surroundings, and Match the Style to create images with a style similar to others chosen by the merchant. These three tools make these changes without altering the appearance of the food.

One of the company’s enhancements to its DoorDash Commerce Platform uses AI to turn the menu, branding and images a merchant already has on DoorDash into a branded website for direct ordering. Another enhancement uses AI to automate marketing campaigns around occasions such as Mother’s Day, per the release.

“These new tools reflect our belief that the right technology should remove friction, not add it, so merchants can focus on what they do best: making great food and delivering incredible customer experiences,” Brian Tolkin, head of merchant product at DoorDash, said in the release.

PYMNTS reported in February that DoorDash is evolving from a food delivery app into a broader commerce platform that blends software, advertising, fulfillment and autonomy in an effort to give local businesses the tools to compete with larger digital rivals.

During the company’s fourth quarter earnings call, DoorDash Chief Financial Officer Ravi Inukonda spoke of the company’s investments in owning the software and logistics stack that powers local commerce. “We believe these investments are the right investments, especially as we think about becoming the operating system for local commerce,” Inukonda said.

According to a report Thursday (April 30) from Bloomberg News, this effort is happening in markets such as Florida, where Walmart stores have begun stocking more Cuban-inspired coffee and beans from a local producer. In other states, the company is offering local brands of condiments like mustard and mayonnaise.

The report adds that although regionally sourced items are nothing new, Walmart is aiming to stretch beyond its current assortment and prioritizing this work based on customer response.

A spokesperson for the retail giant told Bloomberg Walmart is melding together technology and merchant expertise to understand which products local customers value, and then quickly getting them on shelves.

Bloomberg notes there’s a balancing act in play: Local products can draw in more customers, but the vendors behind these items are typically smaller and can face more supply chain issues than national brands.

The report also points out retailers are feeling pressured, as rising gas prices and declining consumer sentiment makes consumers more cautious about spending.

In fact, consumer sentiment is now at a historically bad place because of the price of fuel. Last week, the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment fell to the lowest level recorded in its nearly 75-year history due to gas prices.

The connection between the cost of gas and consumer sentiment was seen earlier in the month, when gas prices softened after the announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the U.S-Iran war, followed by a modest uptick in consumer sentiment.

As for Walmart, research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that the company and rival Amazon are now courting the same shoppers.

“The data shows that Amazon still leads in the fun, non-essential stuff, while Walmart dominates in necessities,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.

For example, Amazon captured 35% of consumer spending on sporting goods, hobby items, music and books, while Walmart enjoys 21% of food and beverage spend. However, both retailers are pushing into the other’s territory while also serving as “each other’s best teachers,” the report added.

“What’s changing is how aggressively both retailers are moving beyond those traditional lanes,” Doug Straton, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice (and former chief digital officer of Hershey), said in an interview with PYMNTS.

“Walmart is expanding its digital and marketplace capabilities to compete in more discovery-driven categories, while Amazon is pushing further into everyday essentials and repeat purchases.”