Xin Ou
Research expert covering Greater China
Artificial intelligence (AI) in e-commerce - statistics & facts
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become so efficient and reliable in processing huge amounts of data that digital industries will not make without them in the future. Often defined as the new electricity, AI empowers online retailers throughout the entire value chain, with applications ranging from inventory management to customer services, from dynamic pricing to fraud detection. Enhanced by AI, extended reality (XR) has reached unseen levels of quality, too. E-commerce companies can now provide a product experience that might be just as good – if not better – than the in-store one.
AI is a machine intelligence trained to communicate like a human – a particularly useful feature in customer care. While chatbots handle standardized and easily categorized customer requests, such as the update on online order status. This was the request most consumers needed help with and felt more comfortable using AI tools for. More advanced AI-driven shopping assistants simulate a human customer agent and can communicate and establish a relationship with the customer. AI agents are popular in the purchase of flights and accommodation services, while the usage rates were lower for other merchandise categories like electronics, beauty, and fashion. More than that, AI is replacing professional roles in the online retail business, as well as the human customer. Just as voice assistants like Siri and Alexa can place online orders, AI technologies behind autonomous cars or smart devices could finalize a purchase of products and services. Machine customers are expected to gain momentum between 2025 and 2030, according to most worldwide CEOs.
A different shopping experience for every customer
Customers expect a personalized shopping experience tailored to their needs and interests. To achieve that, online retailers categorize shoppers into groups, customer persona, and cohorts. While this strategy worked in the past, it could now be outdated. Online retail is moving towards a much more sophisticated segmentation, i.e. personalization, as AI tools profile online customers better than ever before. AI-powered product recommendations displayed on e-commerce sites and predictions of customer preferences can be based on more variables: ratings and reviews, purchase history, customer location and demographic data, seasonal trends, previous search queries and browsing history, user interaction, traffic data, and so on. AI can optimize product recommendations to such a level that some shoppers could hardly identify the AI role behind them.AI is a machine intelligence trained to communicate like a human – a particularly useful feature in customer care. While chatbots handle standardized and easily categorized customer requests, such as the update on online order status. This was the request most consumers needed help with and felt more comfortable using AI tools for. More advanced AI-driven shopping assistants simulate a human customer agent and can communicate and establish a relationship with the customer. AI agents are popular in the purchase of flights and accommodation services, while the usage rates were lower for other merchandise categories like electronics, beauty, and fashion. More than that, AI is replacing professional roles in the online retail business, as well as the human customer. Just as voice assistants like Siri and Alexa can place online orders, AI technologies behind autonomous cars or smart devices could finalize a purchase of products and services. Machine customers are expected to gain momentum between 2025 and 2030, according to most worldwide CEOs.
Gen AI applications in e-commerce
AI generates text content based on product reviews, too. The automated summary of product reviews is one of the most appreciated and useful AI features in e-commerce and represented a strategic launch of Amazon which even rolled out product summaries in audio format on the U.S. marketplace. Embedding generative AI tools in online stores did not stop shoppers from using external and more popular platforms for shopping purposes. In the United States, nearly 60 percent of shoppers used ChatGPT for inspiration and about the same number of them used Gemini or ChatGPT to shop online.
