The Semantic Web of Retail: A Taxonomic Integration of Web 3.0, Decentralized E-Commerce, and Agentic Commerce

This is a conceptual paper on next-generation digital trade that proposes a multi-layered taxonomic integration of Web 3.0, decentralized e-commerce, and the emerging paradigm of Agentic Commerce. While current literature often conflates technological infrastructure with institutional governance, this paper utilizes a bibliometric diagnostics and Natural Language Processing (NLP) BERT clustering of 25 core empirical studies to delineate these boundaries. We introduce the “Semantic Web of Retail” as a foundational data layer, arguing that it is a structural necessity for the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) economy, where autonomous AI agents, or “synthetic shoppers,” execute transactions on behalf of human principals. Our results indicate that while Web 3.0 provides the technological toolkit for programmable ownership, decentralized e-commerce dictates the institutional logic required for trustless verification. Furthermore, we identify a “Shopper Schism” in consumer behavior, where the delegation of economic power to algorithms introduces novel financial risks, including oracle vulnerabilities and principal–agent moral hazards. The study concludes that integrating semantic interoperability with decentralized transaction rails is essential for mitigating systemic risks and enabling secure, autonomous digital markets, and it formalizes the ‘Shopper Schism’ as a novel principal–agent configuration unique to agentic markets.