Exploring The Future of eCommerce Retail with Generative AI

Introducing: Generative AI (GenAI). 

This emerging technology has quickly become a necessity for modern business in today’s competitive market. So let’s take a look at the future of eCommerce retail with GenAI so you can start strategizing on how to stay ahead in a saturated landscape.

Moving Beyond GenAI-Powered Chatbots 

GenAI does a good job processing vast amounts of information to generate relevant responses, thanks to its advanced algorithms and learning capabilities. This presents massive opportunities — along with its fair share of limitations. Just because it can understand and answer unknown scenarios, is an all-encompassing tool such as this the best solution and subsequent interface for users?

The most effective approach for eCommerce is to tailor the AI's capabilities and interfaces to specific user needs or goals; in other words, the right retail way to utilize GenAI isn’t always just a simple chatbot.

For example, a customer-facing interface could involve integrating GenAI into the search bar, transforming the shopping experience by offering personalized search suggestions and responding to complex queries more intuitively.

Beyond advancement in front-end interfaces, GenAI can revolutionize backend processes as well, via: 

• Attribute enrichment. By automatically enriching attributes, GenAI acts as your brand’s behind-the-scenes quality control specialist. It can identify and fix gaps in product data, from product descriptions and pricing details to specifications, categories, and more. This automation ensures your brand capitalizes on fast-moving trends (think: those common of fast fashion), maintains a strong image that builds customer trust, and reduces zero result searches for even the most obscure queries — all at instant speed.
• AI-generated collections. GenAI can also create personalized collections at scale, tailored on a user level. This allows merchandisers to not only take the guesswork out of creating landing pages that convert, but also leave tedious updates to the AI, which optimizes rules in real-time according to clickstream data, business KPIs, and other critical signals.
• Translated and localized product content. From regional spelling (“color” and “colour”) to different interpretations of the same word (“pants” in the USA vs UK), global eCommerce retailers need to connect with customers on an individualized cultural level. GenAI-driven localization algorithms adeptly catch errors and discrepancies, helping to tailor product content to align with cultural contexts, regional preferences, and linguistic nuances.

All of these automations not only reduce manual work for merchandising teams, allowing them to dedicate more time to strategic, needle-moving initiatives, but they also enhance the accuracy and efficiency of merchandising efforts.