Shift vs. lift

The distinction dates back to the early ecommerce era, when companies debated whether online sales represented new demand or simply migrated purchases that would have happened offline anyway. Andy Hoar has argued both matter: lift is what every company wants, but shift is still valuable, because if a company does not capture that shifting demand in its own channel, a competitor’s channel will. The same framing has resurfaced in discussions of agentic commerce, where executives eager to see incremental revenue may undervalue the real, if less visible, gain of retaining customers who would otherwise have shifted their buying behavior to a rival that offered a better AI-enabled experience.