Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce and
retail services
Introduction
As humans have continuously laid their lives to conquer territory, become powerful and
become wealthy throughout recorded history, technology has always advanced at a
very slow speed. However, after the events of World War 2, history changed forever. As
people were conforming to pacifism and not flushing all resources on warfare, humans
had more time to concentrate on science; over the past 50 years, technology, in
particular, has exponentially developed through the roof.
Artificial intelligence, cyber security, software development, data Science and many, many
more branches of computer science have had the most development in the past decade.
However, the most in demand currently is arguably artificial intelligence and it goes much
beyond the stereotypical robot looking to wipe out humanity.
In simple words, artificial intelligence is the simulation of a human’s intelligence and
discernment to carry out tasks that typically only we humans would be able to do.
Even within artificial intelligence, one of the top industries that use it the most is the
retail industry, and this technology truly transformed it to a new level. Thus, I will talk
about artificial intelligence within the retail and e-commerce industries and how it has
revolutionised businesses worldwide.
Literature Review
While thoroughly researching about my topic and reading many articles, an article
about 20 different ways that AI is used for retail experiences by Blake Morgan, in
particular, caught my interest and attention. For instance, it mentioned Lowe’s Home
Improvement company and how they developed an AI bot called the LoweBot which
, helps customers traverse their huge hardware stores and get the items they need. It’s a
very smart bot which roams the store finding customers and asking simple questions to
find what customers want. The LoweBot will show maps or even take you specifically to
the aisle of your product and they also monitor inventory so that the store will exactly
know when and what to restock.
Another incredible example it mentioned was Uniqlo’s use of AI to read minds. Select
stores have a unique kiosk which shows customers a range of different products and then
measures their reactions to the styles and colours of the clothes using built-in
neurotransmitters. There is not a single button to be pushed, using their reactions the
kiosk will then show the customers similar products to what they liked, and it truly
shows off the innovation of the pioneers at Uniqlo and how science has developed so
much.
This made me realise the unknown importance of AI in all fields of work and how AI is the
future of technology and how there are so many ways for humans to delegate work we
would do ourselves to computers that are much more efficient than us in many ways.
Main Discussion
Pro-argument
In Retail, AI has been used in a plethora of ingenious ways that you would never have
thought of ranging from chatbots to Inventory management, which have all developed
retail to an unrecognisable industry compared to the traditional methods in analytics and
customer relations from decades past.
Artificial Intelligence in retail was valued at $1.8 billion (USD) in 2020, which is
expected to boom to $14.71 billion in 2027 (according to Market Study Report) which
is due to the many benefits that using AI in the retail industry provides.
A richer and immersive customer experience. Stores can use AI-enabled devices to
interact with customers and gather data about their preferences and give a refined
selection of recommended products to their liking to help their sales, effectively driving
higher conversion rates, order values and customer loyalty.
These AI enhanced recommendations can work in-store, however work much more
effectively online on e-commerce sites. Online customers are accustomed to being
guided through a website and typically being subtly suggested items to purchase
based on previous behaviours so that each visit to the site won’t be searching through a
list of filters to find what they like. The AI that powers this can learn over longer
periods of time and suggest better and closer suggestion to what a customer like and
will boost the number of returning customers.
Leading AI platforms all have their specific ways to handle refined suggestions,
however they are typically similar. For example, Zeta – “A Single Platform That Delivers
Better Experiences for Consumers and Better Outcomes for Brands” (Zeta Marketing
Platform) – analyse data from customers from their different interactions to all sorts of
retail services
Introduction
As humans have continuously laid their lives to conquer territory, become powerful and
become wealthy throughout recorded history, technology has always advanced at a
very slow speed. However, after the events of World War 2, history changed forever. As
people were conforming to pacifism and not flushing all resources on warfare, humans
had more time to concentrate on science; over the past 50 years, technology, in
particular, has exponentially developed through the roof.
Artificial intelligence, cyber security, software development, data Science and many, many
more branches of computer science have had the most development in the past decade.
However, the most in demand currently is arguably artificial intelligence and it goes much
beyond the stereotypical robot looking to wipe out humanity.
In simple words, artificial intelligence is the simulation of a human’s intelligence and
discernment to carry out tasks that typically only we humans would be able to do.
Even within artificial intelligence, one of the top industries that use it the most is the
retail industry, and this technology truly transformed it to a new level. Thus, I will talk
about artificial intelligence within the retail and e-commerce industries and how it has
revolutionised businesses worldwide.
Literature Review
While thoroughly researching about my topic and reading many articles, an article
about 20 different ways that AI is used for retail experiences by Blake Morgan, in
particular, caught my interest and attention. For instance, it mentioned Lowe’s Home
Improvement company and how they developed an AI bot called the LoweBot which
, helps customers traverse their huge hardware stores and get the items they need. It’s a
very smart bot which roams the store finding customers and asking simple questions to
find what customers want. The LoweBot will show maps or even take you specifically to
the aisle of your product and they also monitor inventory so that the store will exactly
know when and what to restock.
Another incredible example it mentioned was Uniqlo’s use of AI to read minds. Select
stores have a unique kiosk which shows customers a range of different products and then
measures their reactions to the styles and colours of the clothes using built-in
neurotransmitters. There is not a single button to be pushed, using their reactions the
kiosk will then show the customers similar products to what they liked, and it truly
shows off the innovation of the pioneers at Uniqlo and how science has developed so
much.
This made me realise the unknown importance of AI in all fields of work and how AI is the
future of technology and how there are so many ways for humans to delegate work we
would do ourselves to computers that are much more efficient than us in many ways.
Main Discussion
Pro-argument
In Retail, AI has been used in a plethora of ingenious ways that you would never have
thought of ranging from chatbots to Inventory management, which have all developed
retail to an unrecognisable industry compared to the traditional methods in analytics and
customer relations from decades past.
Artificial Intelligence in retail was valued at $1.8 billion (USD) in 2020, which is
expected to boom to $14.71 billion in 2027 (according to Market Study Report) which
is due to the many benefits that using AI in the retail industry provides.
A richer and immersive customer experience. Stores can use AI-enabled devices to
interact with customers and gather data about their preferences and give a refined
selection of recommended products to their liking to help their sales, effectively driving
higher conversion rates, order values and customer loyalty.
These AI enhanced recommendations can work in-store, however work much more
effectively online on e-commerce sites. Online customers are accustomed to being
guided through a website and typically being subtly suggested items to purchase
based on previous behaviours so that each visit to the site won’t be searching through a
list of filters to find what they like. The AI that powers this can learn over longer
periods of time and suggest better and closer suggestion to what a customer like and
will boost the number of returning customers.
Leading AI platforms all have their specific ways to handle refined suggestions,
however they are typically similar. For example, Zeta – “A Single Platform That Delivers
Better Experiences for Consumers and Better Outcomes for Brands” (Zeta Marketing
Platform) – analyse data from customers from their different interactions to all sorts of
