John Lewis Partnership has become the latest retailer to focus on the potential of AI following a new tie-up with Google.
AI will be a key element of the deal, in which the partnership will invest £100m over five years, reflecting increased interest from retailers across the board in the rapidly developing new technology.
The use of AI is quickly becoming more widespread among retailers from Amazon to Next. The possibilities are already being tried out in all sorts of ways. At Amazon’s web services arm, both for its own purposes and to improve customer companies’ capabilities. Meanwhile, at Next, it is being used for forecasting and to produce letters to customers.
“Greater use of AI may prove invaluable as JLP builds its data capabilities to launch a new loyalty programme uniting John Lewis and Waitrose”
Next’s business efficiency deployment of AI is typical of many other retailers’ approaches, but retailers are also tapping AI’s potential to enhance the customer experience. Online department store Very, for instance, hopes to take shoppers’ “product discovery to the next level” through its adoption of AI.
The inclusion of customers as well as back-office efficiency is a big part of JLP’s vision for AI.
What is interesting about John Lewis’ plans is an attempt to marry the human and the digital – an effort to maximise the quality of experience and service traditionally associated with the retailer, which owns Waitrose as well as eponymous department stores.
The partnership said its interest in AI reflected “ambitions to provide customers with even more tailored and personalised experiences” in-store and online. As well as being more efficient, partners should be able to “spend more time focusing on customers” and “better use data insights to help curate great products and services”.
The retailer gave the example of customers being able to scan an image of a room to show its home design team – automatically providing details such as dimensions – so its staff “can take inspiration from their unique preferences and give tailored recommendations that can even complement products they already have”.
The future is here
Waitrose is already using machine learning to inform availability, helping to ensure it has the right supply of product on store shelves at times of customer demand – which also helps the grocer reduce waste.
Across the partnership, greater use of AI may prove invaluable as JLP builds its data capabilities to launch a new loyalty programme uniting John Lewis and Waitrose.
There has been some alarm generally that AI will result in job losses. At JLP there will be none as a direct result of its initiative. That view seems to be the case elsewhere in retail, where the deployment of AI is creating opportunities for employees to develop their roles and learn new skills.
Ikea, for instance, has reassured that jobs will not be replaced by AI. Parent Ingka has been retraining 8,500 call centre staff as interior designers for a couple of years as routine inquiries are increasingly dealt with by its Billie AI bot.
“In Japan, supermarket Aruk Mitajiri is using an avatar concierge to suggest potential purchases to shoppers while they are in the store”
Ingka Group global people and culture manager Ulrika Biesèrt told Reuters in June: “We’re committed to strengthening co-workers’ employability in Ingka, through lifelong learning and development and reskilling, and to accelerate the creation of new jobs.”
There are also some odd-sounding ideas about how AI can help shoppers. In Japan, for instance, supermarket Aruk Mitajiri is using an “avatar concierge” to suggest potential purchases to shoppers while they are in the store. As technology title The Register observed, what will it make of a bald man scrutinising hair products when doing a family shop?
That will be clear in due course. However, whatever the result, AI is here to stay and is only going to become more important in retail.
As it battles to turn around, John Lewis Partnership is right to embrace AI and see whether a combination of human and technological strength can drive business success.
The blend of tech and people power is a retail holy grail as retailers seek the successful business models of the future.
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