Industries most vulnerable to the impact of agents are those relying on information asymmetry, search costs, user inertia, or cumbersome switching to maintain profits: travel booking, service aggregation, product search, as well as newspapers, cable TV, telecommunications, insurance, credit card points, gift cards, self-storage, secondhand ticketing, and payment processing.
Agents can automatically compare prices, renegotiate, or switch service providers on behalf of users, thereby weakening these industries' customer retention advantages. Pay-per-account SaaS (such as office software subscriptions), screen advertising, and some brand value may also be under pressure; "agents performing human actions" will weaken industries that traditionally rely on human clicks and browsing behavior to provide value. This change has a deflationary effect. (JPMorgan Chase report, September 23)
