AI Articles and Analysis in Consumer goods

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.

The global fashion industry is valued worldwide at an estimated $3 trillion and representing 2 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product. The World Bank categorizes apparel in the broader category of manufacturing which represented 15 percent of the global GDP in 2016. eCommerce has shifted the industry from strictly brick-and-mortar (and catalog) to a more mobile and social media-friendly space, which has opened up in applications of AI in fashion that may help to mold the future of the customer experience.

An increasing number of online companies are utilizing recommendation systems to increase user interaction and enrich shopping potential. Use cases of recommendation systems have been expanding rapidly across many aspects of eCommerce and online media over the last 4-5 years, and we expect this trend to continue.

The precipitous drop in the price of drones and the intelligent guidance systems that power them has created a broad range of commercial applications (we covered industrial drone applications in a previous article). One use-case that has captured popular attention and large scale investment from a variety of retailers and start ups is autonomous delivery vehicles.

Episode summary: In this episode we talk to Adam Spector, the Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer at LiftIgniter, a company which provide a service which modulates website experience per users, for an array of different businesses. Adam and I discuss what the tech giants are doing to customize their business experiences, what data they’re using to continually alter user experience and what industries and sectors might be impacted by this aggregate trend as it moves forward.

It’s no secret that e-tailer Amazon has an army of robots at its warehouses to fulfill orders; currently its robot detail is 45,000 strong. The company also wants to put a fleet of airborne drones into service for fast deliveries. The question that traditional retailers face is whether or not investing in robots to operate inside their stores can actually improve business and help them stay relevant with consumers.

Smartphone manufacturers are trend-setters for innovations in the mobile and consumer electronics space at large. The convenience and integral role of mobile technology in the everyday lives of consumers have contributed to the estimated 77 percent of Americans who own a smartphone. It's no wonder so many of the smartphone applications we use every day leverage artificial intelligence to improve the user experience.