BUSINESS AND ECONOMY : ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY:AI TO DRIVE ONLINE SHOPPING

BY ROBIN GHOSH

( ECONOMIST AND BUSINESS MENTOR)

KOLKATA, 25 MARCH 2024:

If you are in retail business,and if you want to upscale your business, you must know how AI can help you offer your customers a unique and frictionless experience.

Essentially, technology be it social commerce or GenAI – what it is expected to do is to reduce friction from their shopping mission.

Technology is supposed to help to find the product,help to transact aSuresh Kumar,global chief technology officer,Walmart Inc explains beautifully how AI is being utilised in his company and receive the product.It should be a delightful journey.

If you have the technology AI or LLM in your back pocket ,it does not ensure a smooth success .Instead,you have to look at customers’ shopping patterns,and directly talk to the customers to understand his or her likes and dislikes.

Having gathered the relevant data , you have now to explore which AI model or Large Language Model available in the market is most effective.

Blending real life experience with insights from data,a new model needs to be created so as to close the loop between what the customers want, what the technology can do and continue to refine the model ad infinitum.

This is an ongoing process – the ultimate goal is to enhance customer experience.

Suresh Kumar,global chief technology officer,Walmart Inc explains beautifully how AI is being utilised in his company.

At Walmart, the AI focus is on four broad areas:

1 Upticking Customer Experience

2 Optimise the inventory flow

3 Creating GenAI assisted personalized advertising and market campaigns.

4 With understanding found by using AI – build up your own tools to create new catalogue of products,new operation systems.

In India,the retail market is growing very fast and differ in scale,volume of business and level of technology being used.There cannot be a standard model which will fit and delivers effective results.The solution has to customize.With abundant talent,this is not a big issue.What is important is to have an entrepreneurial mind to adopt technology with a adaptive mind.