Leveraging AI to Assist Consumers with Products and Lifestyle

The use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning (“ML”) tools is quickly developing to assist more than just industry pioneers, with enhancements in distribution, marketing and industrial efficiencies. These tools are progressively more available to the individual consumer to help make lifestyle and product decisions. 

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The use of AI is providing inspiring developments within the consumer products industry. By employing analytics, companies can anticipate market trends and understand customer demands. This empowers them to create products that effectively cater to individuals’ needs and expectations. Not only does this benefit customers by providing innovative solutions, but it also strengthens a company’s competitiveness in the market.

In lifestyle and consumer products, AI/ML technologies analyze data from various sources such as social media, customer feedback and browsing histories. This data-driven approach enables companies to better understand customer preferences and behaviors, and then suggest products that align with customers tastes, delivering them a relevant and enjoyable shopping experience. This level of personalization enhances customer satisfaction, increases conversion rates and fosters brand loyalty.

The shopping experience is also improving through the development of consistently available and responsive customer care, in the form of AI-powered chatbots. These interfaces play a role in enhancing overall customer service by addressing inquiries about products. Virtual assistants and other AI tools are always accessible to enhance customer engagement while reducing response time. 

One of the more fascinating developments is the use of natural language processing (“NLP”) to further connect consumers to individualized product developments or services. NLP is the use of machine learning to recognize the human voice and apply accurate meaning to the user’s requests. This service is increasingly used within industry to create more efficiencies and increase consumer satisfaction. For example, many companies utilize this service to offer customer service chat portals, which can follow a consumer’s queries and provide feedback that is designed to be as responsive as a human representative.¹ 

Sentiment analysis, another feature of NLP, uses machine learning to better understand a person’s emotions regarding a product or service with which they are interacting. This technology can gather viable feedback through the analyzation of words associated with a good or service which provides information on the success, or failure, of a new feature. Although these analyses are not foolproof, this appears to be a tool with significant potential to assist both industry and the end user.²

Another feature that AI/ML provides is an improvement to the transparency of business practices and sustainability of consumer products.³ Companies can utilize supply chain monitoring and data analysis to track the origins of products, which gives them the ability to improve their practices to minimize negative environmental impact. This information is also accessible to customers, enabling them to make choices and support brands that resonate with their values. As consumers and government policies increasingly require environmentally conscious policies, major retailers such as Target and Walmart are utilizing these advancements to meet consumers’ expanding expectations of retailers to adhere to global sustainability initiatives.⁴

Additionally, businesses can use AI/ML tools to optimize their pricing strategies. They can leverage pricing models that consider factors like demand trends, customer behavior patterns and competitor pricing to automatically adjust product prices over time, enabling them to remain competitive.

Challenges Created by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

However, there are also concerns associated with harnessing AI and machine learning tools to empower customers. One notable challenge is mitigating risk related to privacy protection while collecting and analyzing the copious amounts of customer data. It is crucial to strike a balance between utilizing data for insights while safeguarding privacy to maintain trust well as regulatory compliance. While many consumers enjoy and appreciate the convenience and customization these tools bring, they also cite concerns regarding privacy and the sharing of their sensitive data. Organizations need to follow transparent data collection and storage practices and adhere to high standards of responsibility in these newly emerging realms.

Embracing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for the Long Term 

It is easy to see how the integration of AI and machine learning tools have brought about a change in how customers interact with brands and make purchasing decisions. Through recommendations, chatbots, sustainability processes and improved customer service initiatives, consumers now have greater access to information and support than ever before. This gives them the ability to make more knowledgeable choices as customers, which in turn enhances their overall level of satisfaction. It is easy to imagine how these technological advancements will continue to evolve in the future and redefine both the consumer and industry relationship, bringing forth previously unimagined benefits in consumers’ modern lifestyle. 

¹9 Powerful Ways to Use NLP to Improve Customer Service (nextiva.com)
²Sentiment Analysis Guide (monkeylearn.com)
³How Walmart is using A.I. to make shopping better (cnbc.com)
⁴Whole Foods, Walmart, Target viewed as ‘most transparent’ | Supermarket News