# Alex Khmurets

Alex Khmurets writes about CPG, retail media, e-commerce, and agentic commerce, and shares practical lessons on product management.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/alex-khmurets/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aakhmurets
- LinkedIn followers: 1,822
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, ecommerce, product-management, agentic-commerce, retail-media
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-10-08

## Summary

Useful for keynote and advisory on how retail media and shopping agents change CPG operating models

- Best for: CPG commerce and marketing leaders wanting keynote plus advisory on budgets and organization
- Not for: Consumer SKU launch needing paid creator video, media kit, rates, reach guarantees
- Check first: Confirm speaking and advisory terms, audience details, and past results on comparable topics

### Takeaways

- Retail media reorganizes the CPG company, not just adding a channel
- Price increases can cost brands volume and market share as input costs ease
- Agentic commerce turns discoverability into an infrastructure problem

## Main ideas

- **Price increases have stopped producing growth**: Khmurets argues that recent CPG growth came from price realization rather than selling more, and that the tradeoff has flipped. An extra point of price now loses more units than it gains in dollars: households that absorbed post-pandemic increases are cutting back, while input costs used to justify those increases, such as cocoa, freight, and labor, have normalized. Retailers see what remains as margin capture. Companies that keep pushing price lose share as volumes fall faster than prices rise. The largest beverage companies moved first, Khmurets notes, signaling where the rest of the industry is heading.
- **Retail media is reorganizing the CPG company, not just adding a channel**: For fifty years, the brand-retailer relationship ran on trade dollars, while e-commerce operated as a small team inside sales or marketing. Khmurets argues that retail media collapsed that separation. Brands now fund incremental retail media from brand marketing rather than trade, and the org chart follows the money: sales, marketing, and commerce consolidate under one leader, with retail-media roles inside the brand. Khmurets quotes Toby Espinosa, VP of Ads at DoorDash, saying half the dollars sit locally in the trade bucket and half in national media. Retail media, Khmurets concludes, is both at once.
- **Agentic commerce turns discoverability into an infrastructure problem**: Khmurets argues that the first agent-driven holiday season is close and most CPG brands are not ready, largely because they treat AI as an internal employee rather than as the buyer. The practical consequence is a new storefront built for agents: a direct-to-consumer endpoint with a JSON catalog, live price and inventory, and programmatic checkout, with no human interface in the loop. Khmurets sees this as a product and data problem more than an advertising one, so the response cannot stop at media planning.
- **Amazon's advantage is turning into friction**: Khmurets argues Amazon is repeating Blockbuster's mistake by defending its scale and selection while adding friction to purchase. The comparison draws on two quoted statements: Blockbuster in 2007 said its stores were a competitive advantage because people like going to them, while Amazon in 2026 says horizontal agents are good at aggregating selection but retailers are better at selection, price, delivery, and trust. Khmurets's claim is that agents reward open, programmatic access and that blocking them pushes buyers to competitors.
- **Product management: vision as a laser pointer, evidence over timelines**: Earlier posts carry the same operating discipline into product work. Khmurets rejects the "herding cats" description of product management as demeaning and as saying more about the manager than the engineers and stakeholders. Cats hunt; they do not graze. To move them, use a laser pointer—a model Khmurets offers for a product vision that inspires, clarifies, and drives. In a post drawn from Profitero's 2023 product hiring round, Khmurets argues that candidates stand out by using frameworks critically rather than mechanically, treating development as a series of measurable increments rather than a straight line from deadline to delivery, and recruiting senior stakeholders as champions by showing them the roadmap and asking them to prioritize.

## Work to read

- [The agentic Black Friday warning](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aakhmurets_cpg-retail-aicommerce-activity-7508966162513317888-ZELz)
- [Retail media redrew the CPG org chart](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aakhmurets_retailmedia-cpg-ecommerce-activity-7505756406457884672-NdwV)
- [Trade dollars, retail media, and the shrinking e-commerce silo](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aakhmurets_cpg-retail-ecommerce-activity-7511465371502129153-sFEI)
- [Amazon's Blockbuster moment](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aakhmurets_agenticcommerce-retail-ecommerce-activity-7513252148332294148-Oq7r)
- [The price-hike era is ending](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aakhmurets_cpg-pricingarchitecture-retail-activity-7506421204883517440-F55i)
- [“Herding cats” is the wrong analogy for product management](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aakhmurets_i-hate-the-herding-cats-analogy-for-product-activity-7169162427698253824-domn)

## Brand relationships

- **Profitero** (mention)
- **Profitero+** (mention)

## Partnerships

Across seven posts written between February 2024 and October 2026, Khmurets publishes analysis and commentary on CPG pricing, retail media, e-commerce organization, agentic commerce, and product management. Commercial references are to their employer and the companies they analyse, not to a rate card, media kit, sponsored-format menu, or booking route. The posts do not identify an official partnership page, sponsorship policy, audience specification, or inquiry address. Brands should confirm commercial terms directly before budgeting. Khmurets has no published product to buy for campaigns aimed at agentic commerce and retail media. The analysis could support a paid engagement: in the Post about agentic commerce, they argue that brands need an "Agentic User Experience" and cite examples including retailer shopping agents and CPG AI deployments. Any keynote, advisory, or sponsored-content arrangement would be negotiated case by case, with format, deliverables, and disclosure terms settled privately.

## Alternatives

- Roger Dunn: Choose Roger Dunn for a current briefing on the agentic-commerce frontier as platforms bring it to market: TikTok's Buy Direct, Shopping Assistant and Agentic Leads; OpenAI's always-on dots that can buy; and whether an agent can read a brand's product data and complete checkout. Dunn tracks announcements closely, distinguishes what is live from what is directional, and translates developments into implications for discovery, measurement, and ownership of the customer relationship. This suits a CPG commerce team that needs a current briefing and specific platform questions to ask.
- Don “eCommerce” Brett: Choose Don “eCommerce” Brett for a retailer-level growth evidence session and an Amazon grocery case. The posts use public retailer filings and NielsenIQ data to distinguish total retail growth from much faster digital growth, show gaps such as Walmart's +2.6% comparable sales against +24% digital, and explain why Amazon perishables shoppers spend more and shop more often. This fits a CPG leadership session on where to put the next dollar of ecommerce investment and how to execute on Amazon and other retailers.
- Guru Hariharan: Choose Guru Hariharan for a session on AI risk, governance, and retail-media performance proof. One post covers enterprise AI failure modes—hallucinated decisions, unmanaged accounts, bias litigation, ROI measurement, and worker training—and argues that companies need AI-specific liability thinking. The other gives Amazon's advertising numbers and a concrete performance readout for AI-powered Sponsored Prompts, arguing that product-data quality now drives ad conversion. This suits a CPG team that needs a risk and governance counterweight or an Amazon AEO content-to-media audit.

---
AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/