Machine Customer
A machine customer is a non-human economic actor — an AI agent or automated system — that researches, selects, and purchases goods and services on behalf of a person or organization.
The term was coined by Gartner, which also uses "custobot" for the same concept. A machine customer evaluates a brand the way software evaluates inputs: it reads structured data, weighs source authority, and resolves a recommendation. It is not persuaded by design, copy, or emotion.
For brands, the machine customer changes the unit of competition. Visibility means being retrievable and recommendable to an algorithm — accurate entity data, clean product feeds, and trusted sources — rather than being persuasive to a human shopper. A market with machine customers rewards structure over storytelling at the point of selection.
FAQ
Who coined the term machine customer?
Gartner introduced the term, along with the related term "custobot."
Why do machine customers matter for marketing?
When the buyer is an algorithm, brand visibility depends on machine-readable data and source authority — not traditional persuasion.
Related: Agentic Commerce | Shopping Agent | Agent-Readable Content | AI Visibility
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