Dear Reader,
Buying spectacles online is perhaps one of the most excruciating experiences. You never know how they’d end up looking on your face, you’re not sure if they’d be even comfortable. So as I spent my recent Sunday trying to look up new frames online, it remained an uphill battle. Online retailers I noticed have been using AI for sometime now to create a virtual mirror, allowing you to see how you’d look in that product or in this case, the glasses.
For me, the purchase eventually happened after I visited the physical store of the same brand. However, as I returned home, I logged on to the brand’s online portal to check how accurate the virtual mirror really was. Turns out, pretty horrible. The size of the frame was completely off the mark, the colours weren’t entirely accurate and of course, there’s no telling about the comfort. I then tried to talk to a customer care agent through a pop up chat. It wasn’t hard to figure that I was in fact talking to a bot. The experience was subpar to say the least.
This experience with virtual mirrors and chatbots appears to be consistent with most online retailers. Yet, when it comes to using AI in retail, people often talk about just these two use cases, perhaps the worst flag-bearers for AI adoption in retail.
So, at ETCIO, we sat down (virtually of course) with several retailers to if AI is still just a hype. Turns out, it’s not. We spoke to global retailers like Ikea and Decathalon to smaller Indian retailers such as Mamaearth, Milton and Wakefit and realized how AI is vastly underplayed in the retail sector. Retailers large and small are using AI to do a lot more than adopting gimmicks. In fact, they are using AI across all their processes to plan better, cut down on wastages, improve customer experience, cut inventories, and of course, make more money.
In this part two of our supply chain series, you’ll hear some fascinating stories from Indian and global retailers how AI is being leveraged to transform the retail space all together.
If you have more such examples from your own experience in AI, do write to us and we’d love to share your story.
Regards
Varun Aggarwal
Editor, ETCIO
varun.aggarwal@timesinternet.in
How Indian retailers are getting AI savvy
Indian retailers small and large alike have started using AI to accurately predict sales at least a month in advance, use that to plan manufacturing, inventory and reap in big benefits even in tough market situations
Cloud technologies are making AI accessible to the smallest of retailers who are now using this as leverage against far larger counterparts and are even seeing winning at least the early battles.
Take for example, Wakefit, a mattress brand you would associate with their witty advertising campaign. The online retailer, just a five-year old startup, relying largely on AI to run all aspects of its business and has already turn into one of the largest mattress makers in the country.
A large in-house team of data scientists work behind the scenes at Wakefit to build their proprietary customer acquisition algorithms, tracking a users’ entire journey to the website and using it to then create a unique experience for each prospective customer. But just that is not enough to win the battle against the big boys. You need to deliver on the promise—promise of 48 hours delivery, promise of free returns, promise of response time. And AI continues to play a role at every step of this journey.
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IKEA’s in-store experience goes online with AI
As the Swiss furniture retailer IKEA wondered how it could take the uniqueness of its stores and combine it with the new-age technology to deliver an experience online as strong as it is in the stores, it had to rely on AI.
“To solve this problem, we recently invested in visual AI. It is an application that helps our customers turn their 2D pictures to 3D so they are able to visualize the surroundings better. They can see the rug, sofa, bed, etc and can individually compartmentalize it using AI,” said Divya Kumar, Global Digital Chief Financial Officer, IKEA
From a qualitative perspective, Kumar believes it is all about the experience. She said, “Because everything is standard, it has become difficult to differentiate in the industry, especially online. It doesn’t matter where you go, you get the same experience, so how you differentiate yourself in the experience you’re giving is the qualitative thing we’re going after.”
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Decathlon‘s personalisation journey
Decathlon offers merchandize for close to 50-60 sports and has customers ranging from beginner level to advanced level. Because of the wide range of products, assortments are huge and it gets difficult to navigate the website and discover the right products for a customer. But despite the complications, it was determined to offer a personlized experience for each customer.
“So, the AI-based engine looking at the customer’s interest, sport preference, past browsing history, and past purchases from Decathlon recommends products and services which he/she is most likely to use and purchase. Services can be in the form of an event or training or a yoga class depending on what you are most inclined to. This has directly increased the customer experience because they don’t need to search or look for the products,” said Sanjay Mahar, Data & AI leader at Decathlon.
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