Hong Kong retailers are placing real bets on agentic AI, but the numbers tell a more stubborn story on the ground: 34% of Asia/Pacific retailers still name weak engagement and limited repeat business as their top customer experience challenge, and 31% are losing shoppers to friction at checkout, on the shelf, and in-store navigation. This session puts the latest IDC research on the table — where ambition and operations diverge, and why that gap costs more in a market where every square foot and every headcount decision is already under pressure. You’ll leave with the evidence to separate the agentic AI use cases that genuinely pay back from the ones quietly consuming your budget.

In a market where real estate economics make every square foot count, there’s no room for AI that only works most of the time. This session gets concrete about what it takes to run agentic AI across every store, every trading hour, with the platform and edge infrastructure, monitoring, and predictive maintenance that keep it dependable when headcount is already stretched thin. You’ll come away with a practical view of how to treat uptime and time-to-restore as customer experience decisions, not IT afterthoughts — and what to demand of your technology foundation before you commit the real estate and headcount to scale it.

This is the candid, closed-door part of the morning. Senior retail leaders compare notes directly on the decisions IDC’s data and solutions raise: which agentic AI use cases are worth the square footage and headcount they demand, what service levels need to be locked in before the technology is chosen, and how to close the skills gap through the right partnerships rather than hiring your way out of it. No slides — just a chance to stress-test your own roadmap against what your peers are actually running into, store by store.