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A Body of Work · A Field
Practitioner · Scholar · Author

Architect of The Shopper Schism® and the buying-side theory of agentic commerce.

When the shopper is no longer human, almost everything has to change.
More than twenty-five years running global businesses. Then I built the theory of what comes next.
Paul F. Accornero

Photo: Andrea D'Altoè, Lab Multimedia

The Bridge

An operator who saw the rupture, before it had a name.

For my whole career, I sat where the commercial decisions are made. As a former Group Chief Commercial Officer in a major European consumer-goods group, I carried a global P&L of more than €3.5 billion across more than thirty companies and 120 markets, with more than twenty-five years in the C-suite. The work came down to a single question: why people buy, and how a brand earns the moment of choice.

Then the moment of choice began to move. Not to a different shelf or a new channel, but to an algorithm. I am not a futurist guessing at what comes next. I am the operator who watched it happen, and then did the harder thing: I went and built the body of academic work. The consumer who experiences value and the shopper who executes the purchase are separating, permanently. I named that rupture The Shopper Schism®.

My work lives at the intersection of high-level theory and brutal commercial reality. The platforms build the rails. I map the physics of the buy and sell sides, and help organizations redesign themselves around it.

I am the first to define agentic commerce as an academic discipline, with a registered body of intellectual property, a book with St. Martin's Press, and more than twenty-five working papers behind the theory. How an agent decides. How trust works when the customer is code. How a brand stays chosen when no human is doing the choosing. That is the work, and this is where it lives.

The thread has never broken. The same instinct that ran global businesses now drives the research: a refusal to guess, and a need to know how the decision actually gets made. I founded The AI Praxis to build this field in the open, for the leaders who have to make their brands chosen by machines while the rules are still being written. I have stood where they stand, and that is who the work is for.

The Thesis

One rupture. A whole field follows from it.

The Shopper Schism® is the first permanent separation in the history of commerce: the consumer, who experiences value, from the shopper, who executes the purchase. When an autonomous agent does the buying, a century of marketing built around a single human decision-maker quietly stops working. This is agentic commerce, and everything in my work follows from that one rupture.

See how the field is built →
The Architecture

What follows from the Schism, in three movements.

Nine frameworks.
Three movements.
Academic rigor.
IDiagnosisWhat is changing, and why.
IIActionWhat brands and retailers must do to stay chosen.
IIIGovernanceHow leaders and organizations take responsibility and adapt.
01
I · Diagnosis

The Shopper Schism®

The first permanent separation of the consumer, who experiences value, from the shopper, who executes the transaction.

02
I · Diagnosis

The Great Decoupling

The Schism separates the consumer from the shopper; the Decoupling is its consequence, the brand's direct line to the consumer coming apart once an agent stands in between.

03
I · Diagnosis

The Trust Paradox

Why verification must replace persuasion once an algorithm, not a person, decides what to buy.

04
I · Diagnosis

The Automaton Economy

The market-level picture of how autonomous agents reshape demand, supply, and the structure of the firm.

05
II · Action

How the Algorithm Decides and the Preference Stack

A diagnostic for whether a brand is fit to be chosen by machines. Covers algorithmic readiness, the Four Ds (Data Quality, Discoverability, Decision Clarity, Delivery Reliability), the Great Value Sort, and the algorithmic readiness scorecard.

06
II · Action

Agent Intent Optimisation® and Planning

The disciplines for being chosen when the buyer is a machine: agent intent optimization, algorithmic scoring, and joint business planning rebuilt for autonomous demand.

07
II · Action

The Retail Schism

How the retailer role splits once agents route the purchase, separating the fight to be recommended from the fight to be the place of purchase.

08
III · Governance

The Governance Gauntlet

Strategic risk management for the moment algorithms become your customers.

09
III · Governance

Layers of Trust & Organizational Design

Brand, system, and verification, and how the firm itself must be redesigned when an agent is in the loop.

Explore every framework → The research and the papers → And the organizational work: how the firm itself must change to be chosen.
The Evidence

A body of work, not a theoretical exercise.

The Algorithmic Shopper
St. Martin's Press / Macmillan, April 2027.
Academic recognition
Published in California Management Review (FT50), Forbes, AACSB Insights, and other leading outlets. Academic panellist, retail leadership conferences, AI keynote speaker.
More than 25 Academic Papers
A sustained research record on SSRN. Cited multiple times by academics and in the top two percent of downloaded authors. He also serves as a peer reviewer for leading peer-reviewed journals.
Harvard
Guest lecturer, Professional & Executive Development.
Registered intellectual property
The Shopper Schism® and a growing portfolio of marks across the US, UK, and EU, plus proprietary diagnostic and analytical tools.
Partners and platforms
Appinio, the Trust Project, StartSe, UCL, Retail Congress, and leading AI conferences.

Originator of The Shopper Schism®. First to define agentic commerce as an academic discipline, documented in a work registered with the US Copyright Office, July 2025.

What Leaders Say

The verdict from the people who ran the businesses.

Paul is a deeply knowledgeable executive with a breadth of experience and insights into an incredible number of commercial markets all around the world. He has had outstanding success building businesses within the largest, most mature markets to the newest, least developed ones and everything in between.
Mike Prager
Chief Executive Officer, Board Director and Advisor
I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent eight years on Paul’s team, because it was a team and we all really felt it. He is a truly inspiring leader who transformed the commercial arm of the company, implementing an international commercial policy and the Perfect Store and Perfect Screen programmes that were critical to its success.
Alex Barnett
Managing Director, De’Longhi Group Iberia
Paul F. Accornero
The Algorithmic Shopper
Rethinking Growth, Strategy, and Brand Power in an AI-First World
St. Martin's Press · 2027
The Book

The Algorithmic Shopper

Rethinking Growth, Strategy, and Brand Power in an AI-First World.

For companies who still assume a human makes the final choice at the moment of purchase, the rules have already changed. The Algorithmic Shopper is about what happens when that stops being true. It is the definitive account of agentic commerce: how the buyer becomes a machine, why a century of marketing quietly breaks, and what leaders who see it first need to do differently. This book is the definitive playbook to gaining a competitive advantage at a moment of historical inflection in the world of commerce. The field told as a story, for the people who have to deliver every day. From St. Martin's Press, Macmillan, April 2027.

Work With Me

Five ways to put the work to use.

i

Strategic Advisory

For boards and C-suites preparing for a market where the shopper is an algorithm. Retained and project-based engagements. Built on The Algorithmic Shopper and its derivatives.

Start a conversation →
ii

Algorithmic Readiness

A structured diagnosis of whether your brand, products, and services are fit to be chosen by machines. A clear action strategy to be sure that they are, developed with proprietary tools through The AI Praxis technology stack. Developed from the principles of The Algorithmic Shopper.

See the assessment →
iii

Keynotes & Speaking

The thesis, told live, for boards, leadership summits, and industry stages. Also available for webinars, executive briefings, roundtable discussions, and fireside chats.

Invite a talk →
iv

Executive Education

Comprehensive syllabus design, guest lecturing, and workshops for business schools, corporate programs, and leadership academies. Delivered by an experienced senior executive who worked in the trenches and backed by academic rigor.

Explore the programs →
v

Research, Licensing & Affiliations

Access the frameworks, the papers, and the institute behind them. For organizations and businesses that understand this point of historical inflection in commerce and want to build on the intellectual property and its foundation.

Explore the affiliation →
Press & Writing

In the press. On the record. In the field.

California Management Review
FT50. The research, reaching the practitioners who run the businesses.
Forbes
Commentary and analysis on agentic commerce and the future of brands.
AACSB Insights
On the academic stakes of a field that does not yet have a name everyone accepts.
The Trust Project
Media partnership on verification and trust in the age of autonomous agents.
The Blog
Longer thinking, faster than a paper. Essays on agentic commerce, published here as the field develops.
Press enquiries
For media, editorial, or broadcast requests, please write to paul.accornero@aipraxis.ai.