Nike Eliminated Its CCO. So Did American Airlines. Intel's Just Resigned. Here's What It Means.
The organizational transformation hiding in plain sight
Nike Eliminated Its CCO. So Did American Airlines. Intel's Just Resigned. Here's What It Means.
The organizational transformation hiding in plain sight
On December 2, 2025, Nike announced a restructuring that sent ripples through the global business community. The sportswear giant eliminated two C-suite positions: Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Technology Officer. Global sales operations would now report to the Chief Financial Officer. Four regional geography leaders would report directly to CEO Elliott Hill.
The business press framed this as the latest chapter in Nike's ongoing turnaround story—a philosophical rebuke of the John Donahoe era, the second major restructuring in seven months. But this interpretation, while accurate, misses a deeper signal.
Nike isn't cutting costs. It's reorganizing for a different kind of customer.
The Pattern: Chief Commercial Officers Are Disappearing
Nike's restructuring is not an isolated event. It's part of a broader pattern of commercial leadership transformation—and specifically, the elimination or fundamental restructuring of the Chief Commercial Officer role—across major global corporations.
American Airlines (May 2024): The airline let go of its Chief Commercial Officer, Vasu Raja, amid a downgrade in financial outlook. The company's Chief Strategy Officer assumed leadership of the commercial organization. Raja had overseen American's customer organization, global network, alliances and partnerships, revenue management, and loyalty program. His departure was notable for what American's announcement didn't include: any explanation, or even the customary thank-you quote from the CEO. The airline's stock plunged following the announcement.
Intel (April 2025): Chief Commercial Officer Christoph Schell resigned amid the company's massive restructuring under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Intel had reported its first annual net loss since 1986—a staggering $18.8 billion in 2024—and was cutting 20% of its global workforce. Schell's departure came as the company flattened its leadership structure and consolidated commercial functions under different leadership.
CSX (October 2025): In perhaps the most telling move, the railroad giant appointed its former Chief Commercial Officer, Kevin Boone, as Chief Financial Officer. This unusual career trajectory—from CCO to CFO—signals something profound about where commercial authority is heading. When your commercial leader becomes your finance leader, it suggests the company has concluded that commercial decisions are fundamentally financial decisions.
Baxter International (October 2025): When COO Heather Knight departed to become Chief Commercial Officer at Solventum, Baxter announced it would "no longer have a COO." The role wasn't being replaced—it was being eliminated entirely.
The Broader Commercial and Marketing Leadership Crisis
The CCO eliminations are part of an even broader restructuring of commercial and marketing leadership across the Fortune 500.
UPS eliminated its Chief Marketing Officer in December 2023, replacing the role with a Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer—a hybrid role that merges commercial execution with strategic planning. Starbucks has systematically dismantled its C-suite commercial architecture, eliminating its CMO in 2024, its COO in 2022, and its CTO earlier this year. In their place, CEO Brian Niccol has installed regional CEOs with substantial autonomy over their markets.
The data tells a stark story. Spencer Stuart reports that 34% of Fortune 500 companies now operate without a Chief Marketing Officer or equivalent role. Forrester's research shows that only 49% of Fortune 500 marketers still hold the "CMO" title, down from 55% just a few years ago. When Forbes released its list of the 50 most influential CMOs, 14 of them didn't actually hold the CMO title—they bore alternative labels like "chief commercial officer" or "chief growth officer."
This is not a cyclical adjustment. This is structural transformation.
The Conventional Explanations—And Why They Fall Short
Business analysts typically offer three explanations for these restructurings:
The cost-cutting thesis: Companies are eliminating expensive C-suite roles to improve margins. This explanation is intuitive but doesn't fit the data. Nike reported 1% revenue growth in its most recent quarter—not a crisis that demands aggressive headcount reduction. American Airlines cut its CCO while still generating substantial revenue. And if cost were the primary driver, we would expect to see more uniform cuts across C-suite functions, not the specific targeting of commercial leadership.
The performance thesis: Commercial leaders are being held accountable for underperformance. This is partially true—American Airlines had indeed lagged Delta and United, and Vasu Raja's direct-selling strategy had alienated travel agents. But Intel's CCO departure came amid a company-wide restructuring, not a commercial-specific failure. And Nike's CCO elimination was framed as structural redesign, not performance management.
The generalist thesis: Korn Ferry has documented a trend toward "clustering" executive functions under fewer, broader roles. The argument is that specialization has become a liability—that modern executives need to integrate across domains rather than optimize within them. This explanation has merit, but it doesn't answer the crucial question: Why are commercial functions specifically being consolidated under finance or strategy leadership?
I believe the answer lies in a transformation that few have fully grasped: the rise of the algorithmic customer.
The Shopper Schism: When Your Customer Becomes an Algorithm
For over a century, commercial leadership was built on a simple premise: the person who consumes a product is the same person who purchases it. The consumer and the shopper were unified in a single human actor. Every technique of marketing, sales, and commercial strategy—from brand building to relationship selling to promotional mechanics—was designed to influence that unified human decision-maker.
That unity is dissolving.
Today, consumers increasingly delegate purchasing decisions to AI agents. A human might say: "Keep my household essentials stocked" or "Find me running shoes under $150 with good arch support." An algorithm—whether Amazon's Alexa, Google's Gemini, ChatGPT, or a specialized commerce agent—then independently evaluates alternatives, makes selections, and executes transactions.
I call this the Shopper Schism: the permanent structural separation between the human consumer (who defines needs and preferences) and the algorithmic shopper (who evaluates options and executes purchases).
The data suggests this transformation is accelerating rapidly. Kearney research indicates 60% of US consumers expect AI shopping agents within one year. Kantar and Similarweb report that 51% of Generation Z now start product research in large language models rather than traditional search engines. Adobe forecasts that more than half of consumers will use AI assistants for shopping by the end of 2025. BCG finds that customers acquired through AI agents are 10% more engaged and arrive further down the purchase funnel. And Reuters projects that 25% of e-commerce will flow through AI agents by 2030—representing roughly $500 billion annually.
What Algorithms Value—And What They Don't
Here is the crucial insight: algorithmic shoppers evaluate products fundamentally differently than human shoppers.
Human shoppers respond to:
• Emotional positioning and brand storytelling
• Visual design and packaging aesthetics
• Relationship depth with sales representatives
• Aspirational identity and social signaling
• In-store experience and merchandising
Algorithmic shoppers optimize on:
• Structured data and technical specifications
• Price competitiveness and value metrics
• Availability and delivery speed
• Numerical reviews and verification signals
• API accessibility and platform integration
Research from Columbia Business School confirms these behavioral differences empirically. AI shopping agents systematically favor products with platform endorsements (like Amazon's "Overall Pick") while penalizing advertising signals (products marked "Sponsored"). Human consumers, by contrast, are often influenced by both.
The capabilities that built commercial empires over the past century—the capabilities that Chief Commercial Officers have traditionally mastered—are precisely the capabilities that algorithmic intermediation devalues.
The Capability Mismatch
This is where the CCO eliminations start to make strategic sense.
Traditional CCO capabilities:
• Relationship building with key accounts
• Negotiation and deal-making
• Sales force leadership and motivation
• Customer intimacy and empathy
• Persuasion and influence
Algorithmic commerce demands:
• Data infrastructure fluency
• API optimization and technical integration
• Structured data management
• Platform economics and algorithmic visibility
• Quantitative performance optimization
These are fundamentally different capability sets. Asking a CCO to pivot from "chief persuader" to "chief algorithmic architect" may be unrealistic. Companies are concluding it's more effective to restructure than to retrain.
Why the CFO? Why Regional Leaders?
This framework explains the specific restructuring choices we're seeing.
The CFO ascendancy makes sense because algorithmic commerce is fundamentally quantitative. Algorithms optimize on measurable metrics: price points, margin structures, promotional ROI, platform economics. Revenue Growth Management—once a specialized commercial function—is increasingly algorithmic, requiring the analytical rigor that finance brings.
CSX's decision to appoint its CCO as CFO is the clearest signal: the company concluded that the skill sets were converging. When commercial decisions become investment decisions, the distinction between commercial and financial leadership blurs.
Nike's statement explicitly noted that moving sales to the CFO "ensures store and digital-platform insights directly shape corporate planning, growth initiatives and investment priorities." This is not cost-cutting language. This is capability-alignment language.
Regional fragmentation makes sense because platform ecosystems are regional. Amazon dominates North America and Western Europe. Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Douyin dominate China. Mercado Libre dominates Latin America. Each platform has different data structures, ranking algorithms, API capabilities, and emerging agent integrations.
A global Chief Commercial Officer cannot optimize across these heterogeneous ecosystems. The WeChat mini-program strategy that works in China is irrelevant to Amazon's A9 algorithm in the United States. Regional leaders with deep platform expertise can navigate these differences. Global functional executives cannot.
An Insider's Perspective
I write this as someone who leads global commercial operations. For over two decades, I have built and managed sales organizations across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. The instinct, naturally, is to defend the role.
But intellectual honesty requires acknowledging when structural change is warranted.
The Chief Commercial Officer role emerged in an era when persuading human buyers was the central commercial challenge. Success depended on relationship depth, negotiating skill, sales force motivation, and customer intimacy. These remain valuable capabilities. But they are declining in strategic centrality as algorithms increasingly mediate purchasing decisions.
The question is not whether these roles were valuable—they were. The question is whether they remain the optimal organizational structure for competing when your customer is increasingly an algorithm.
The role is not being eliminated because we failed. It is being restructured because the environment that created the role is being transformed.
What This Means for Leaders and Organizations
For current commercial executives: Recognize this as structural shift, not personal failure. Develop hybrid capabilities that bridge traditional commercial expertise with data infrastructure fluency. Position for adjacent roles—Regional President, Chief Growth Officer, board positions—that leverage your market knowledge while adapting to new organizational logic. The CSX example shows one path: commercial leaders who can master financial and analytical disciplines may find their skills more valuable, not less.
For organizations considering restructuring: Restructure for capability, not cost. Coca-Cola's 2017 CMO elimination failed because it was cost-driven rather than capability-driven; the company reinstated the role in 2019 when growth stalled. Invest in new capabilities proactively: data infrastructure, API performance, structured data management, platform relationships. Maintain dual-mode operations—you still need human-facing branding capabilities even as you build algorithmic optimization.
For boards of directors: Ask probing questions about algorithmic readiness. How do AI agents perceive your products relative to competitors? What is your platform relationship strategy? How are you building capabilities for algorithmic visibility? The companies eliminating CCO roles are making implicit bets on their algorithmic readiness. Are you confident your organization could compete if the unified commercial leadership disappeared tomorrow?
The Age of the Algorithmic Shopper Has Begun
Nike's restructuring is not an anomaly. Neither is American Airlines'. Neither is Intel's. They are signals.
We are witnessing the organizational manifestation of a fundamental transformation in how commerce operates. The Shopper Schism—the separation of human consumers from algorithmic purchasers—invalidates century-old assumptions about commercial organization.
The CCO role was designed for an era when persuading human buyers was the central challenge. That era is ending. What replaces it is not yet fully formed—but the outlines are becoming clear: financial leadership over commercial functions, regional autonomy over global coordination, algorithmic optimization over relationship building.
Organizations that recognize this transformation early and restructure accordingly will thrive. Those that resist will be restructured by competitive pressure.
The question every board should be asking is not "Should we eliminate our CCO?" The question is: "Are we organized for the customer we have today—or the customer we'll have tomorrow?"
Paul F. Accornero is Group Chief Commercial Officer at the De'Longhi Group and Founder of The AI Praxis, a research institute focused on algorithmic commerce. His research on the Shopper Schism examines how AI agents are fundamentally reshaping consumer markets. A forthcoming article in California Management Review explores these themes in depth.
