Brands and retailers already face challenges when building data strategies; agent commerce is ready to pour rocket fuel into these challenges. Not only will it change the discoverability of buyers and sellers, it may even change the fundamental definition of industry “categories.”
for NIQthis moment represents an opportunity and responsibility to help build the retail and consumer goods data infrastructure and play a leading role in advancing the types of product data needed to inform and train AI models.
Last month at FMI Midwinter, NIQ North America President Liz Buchanan talked about some of the consumer intelligence company’s priorities for 2026. A longtime destination for executives from top retailers and consumer goods organizations, the event served as the perfect backdrop to discuss everything from collaborative data strategy to changing consumer behavior to retail media opportunities.
Buchanan is excited to bring these things together to drive new and deeper conversations around data governance.
“There are too few conversations about data governance and standards. [and] Rather than making controls a core element of their go-to-market strategy, many organizations relegate controls to specialized departments within the company, she said.
See also: Why focusing solely on AI efficiency is the wrong strategy for retailers
This partly stems from the pressure on today’s leaders to act quickly, and Mr Buchanan feels pressure to ensure that NIQ builds on its heritage and functions as a governance resource. The consumer intelligence company holds a unique position in the industry thanks to its 100-year history in data management and stringent expectations of trust from both retailers and shoppers.
“We sit in a very unique place to address many of the challenges that organizations that are not data companies face. [have to] “I feel a responsibility to help,” she said.
As part of this, NIQ is focused on helping the industry strengthen its data governance model, including through the publication of new standards.
“The need for us to come together as an industry and really think about the governance models that we need around data is really important, because in a world where AI plays a bigger role, there are real opportunities for data to be misused, its value not fully recognized, and frankly, there to be a misallocation of its value,” Buchanan said.
“It is still too early for companies like NIQ to have the opportunity to establish themselves as industry leaders who can help think about things like data standards, good governance, privacy, data protection, value, and new commercial structures around that value.”
She added, “While these AI capabilities have potential and are amazing, we know that AI can be biased, have illusions, and the underlying data can be opaque. We also know that there is valuable intellectual property in that data that many companies have purposely invested in over the years, and that will be used to power models that create new value.”
“Data standards are therefore an important step in mitigating both the risk that AI will give inaccurate or incomplete answers, and the risk that companies will have limited incentive to continue to cultivate valuable intellectual property that actually yields better results from these models over time.”
