AI Articles and Analysis about E-commerce

Artificial intelligence has found its way in different areas in the entertainment industry from offering customized recommendations on your Friday night movies (as in the case of Netflix) to delivering sports match highlights during live TV coverage. In the latter, this was made possible in the 2017 U.S. Open Tennis Championships when IBM Watson Media used its AI tool to showcase play highlights right after they occur.

Episode summary: This week, AI in Industry features Dr. David Franke, Chief Scientist at Vast. David talks about how AI can work with scarce transaction data to derive meaningful analytics for big purchases, such as cars and houses. He elaborates on how the AI can glean information from user interaction and marketplace data to provide customers with the relevant product fit, deals and recommendations on big purchases. He also discusses the future trends and business benefits for early adopters of AI for purchase recommendations of high-cost items. 

The U.S. music industry is an economic staple generating an estimated $7.7 billion in retail revenue in 2016, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The year 2016 also marked the first time that music industry revenue was generated primarily from “streaming music platforms.”

Expert systems and machine learning are two ends of a spectrum working to solve similar problems quite differently. One one hand you have if-then scenarios and a logical approach, and on the other you have vast neural networks and a big data approach. Some companies exist to try and bridge the gap between the if-then rule systems and the massive piles of data. They hope to find a middle ground of sorts, one that mitigates their individual disadvantages. One such company is Montreal’s fuzzy.ai.

The entertainment and media (E&M) industry is a diverse sector composed of multiple segments including film, television and media streamed online. By 2021, the U.S. E&M industry is projected to reach $759 billion in revenue,  increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.6 percent.

eCommerce is a bustling segment of the retail industry representing an estimated $102.7 billion or 8.3 percent of total U.S. retail sales in 2016. Total retail trade was approximated at 5.9 percent of the national GDP in 2016. As digital transactions become the standard method of purchasing goods and services, leading eCommerce firms are exploring how AI can enhance brand competitiveness and customer loyalty.

The following article about artificial intelligence for UX has been written by Paul Daugherty, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Accenture. Accenture is a Fortune 500 consulting and services firm with nearly 400,000 global employees. Editing and quotes added by the Emerj team. For information about our contributed material and publishing arrangements with brands, please visit our partnerships page.

When managers and leaders think about machine learning in retail, they often imagine helpful in-store robots, automated processes like checkout or stocking shelves, or conversational agents that suggest products and answer questions for customers. While these applications should be considered as disruptive factors for retail’s future, it’s unlikely that these factors will be the first wave of AI’s impact on the sector.