Powering Personalized Shopping: The AI Way As digital life becomes more personal and customized so does their preference for shopping

By Anika Parashar

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Customers today are not looking for just products but experiences online. Their loyalty towards any brand is driven by the personalized shopping experiences brands offer. Especially over the past year since the pandemic, consumers are spending record-shattering time on their digital devices. Having life experience on these digital platforms, consumers have also come to expect the same from their shopping. As digital life becomes more personal and customized so does their preference for shopping.

This is where AI steps in. AI-powered tools are helping digital-first brands, understand their consumer and offer tailored services. With advanced analytics powered by AI, brands can cater relevant content to customers and enjoy a more personalized business relationship.

Social media especially became the new shop floor where customers now expect brands to engage with them directly. From catchy content to visuals that take the consumer through the journey of a product, consumers are interacting only with content that resonates with them and AI is a big part of this connection. The future of e-commerce is being greatly influenced by the use of artificial intelligence. AI for online shopping is contributing significantly to improving user experience by offering personalized purchase experiences.

Through personalization with AI-powered tools, brands now have the means to turn every shopping interaction into a meaningful and rewarding experience. This is why personalized shopping experiences have become key to customer acquisition, retention and engagement. Customer engagement in today's retail landscape.

AI is helping brands truly understand customers and their needs. AI-powered tools sift through significant volumes of data and analyse the same for better customer segmentation. By analyzing consumer purchase patterns, previous transactions, interest, demographics and other such relevant data, AI helps suggest relevant and personalized suggestions to the consumer. This in turn increases their chances of buying and interacting with the brand more frequently. The ease of access, ease of purchase and relevance is why there is even more demand for personalization.

But personalization goes beyond mere product recommendations. AI-backed online retail personalization is not limited to just product recommendations. They are vast and versatile. Be it newsletters, editorial content, navigation or related products, AI-driven systems optimize the personal shopping experience of customers on many levels.

This includes the little things that make shopping fun, such as personalized addressing in newsletters and mailers, personalized welcome messages, customized product categorization, dialogue-oriented interaction with smart chatbots, tailored email marketing, analysis of previous purchase patterns and customer reviews for better product suggestions. AI is what keeps the shopping experience authentic, warm and personal.

Besides this, AI is crucial in creating more impactful ads based on previous ad performances.

Augmenting relevant reach by delivering tailored marketing content, such as adverts, blogs, reels, videos, etc., AI works behind the scenes. This in turn optimizes the cost of ad impressions.

The consumer today is spoiled for choices. Approximately 75 per cent of customers expect a response within a couple of minutes. This puts pressure on brands to have state-of-the-art CRM in place and AI-powered chatbots facilitate the same. Learning, evolving and imitating human responses, the chatbots are not limited to just scripted, generic responses.

With AI, shopping has become simple, personalized and fun. The power of AI aids brands in offering tailored shopping experiences to customers' interests based on real-time insights. This creates seamless experiences that further augment the demand for personalized shopping experiences.

Anika Parashar

Founder and CEO at The Woman’s Company

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