Making Sense of the Modern Shopper Journey with AWS’s Justin Honaman | Ep 114

In this episode: AI is moving faster than ever, and retail leaders are shifting their focus from basic operational testing to real-world customer journey transformations. In this episode of Future Shop, host Wendy Liebmann is joined by Justin Honaman, Global Head for Retail, Consumer Goods, and Food Service Business Development at Amazon Web Services. Live from a customer summit in Brazil, Justin dives into the rise of agentic commerce, the technical hurdles of legacy systems, and why company culture, change management, and talent buy-in are the true keys to AI adoption. They also explore the evolution of search, dynamic joint business planning, and how physical stores fit into a digital-first world. Episode Highlights Agentic Commerce Surge: Why AI is moving rapidly into search, supply chain matching, and customer experience, and how brands are deploying conversational shopping assistants in days instead of months. Overcoming Data & Org Bottlenecks: How legacy ERPs, disconnected data platforms, and internal change management often hold retailers back. Rethinking Joint Business Planning: Why traditional annual CPG and retail planning models are failing in an AI-driven environment. The Customer-First Anchor: Why keeping the shopper's true "job to be done" front and center prevents getting lost in shiny new tech. Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction & Live from São Paulo 02:27 - The Shift to Agentic AI and Overcoming Legacy System Bottlenecks 08:12 - Putting the Shopper First: Personalization and Customer Experience 14:33 - The Evolution of Search: From Rufus to Agentic Shopping Assistants 17:17 - How AI is Transforming Retail Media, Trade Spend, and Business Planning 28:55 - Creativity, Operations, and Lessons from Retail Legends Internal Use Only // ©WSL Marketing Inc. The content of this video is the product of WSL Strategic Retail. You can't reproduce it or repurpose it without asking us and without written consent.