Digital leaders in every industry are completely reimagining how their organization uses tech, thanks to generative AI (genAI). Retail and commerce leaders are no exception! In our review of 30 leading retailer and CPG brands’ earnings call transcripts, we found that the number of companies that mentioned genAI increased from 0% to 27% from fiscal year Q2 2022 to Q2 2023.
When it comes to leveraging genAI applications in their commerce solutions, digital leaders must ask their vendors the right questions to uncover the current state — and success — of genAI applications. To help our clients better understand genAI’s role in B2C commerce solutions, we launched a research series in which we ask vendors to outline how they’re bringing genAI into their products today.
The first report in the series, How Generative AI Is Changing The Game In B2C Commerce Solutions, included feedback from 10 B2C commerce solutions providers. Here’s a sneak peek at what we uncovered in the research:
- GenAI-powered chat is the most common use case among B2C commerce vendors. All of the vendor respondents included “genAI as a business-user-facing chat application” in their current offering or roadmap. How are they using it here? To answer questions about how the platform works, respond to business-related questions in natural language, and even to perform some administrative tasks at the request of users. Vendors are also exploring customer-facing genAI chat capabilities that focus on streamlining support agent tasks and processes.
- Product data has big opportunities for genAI enhancement in the retail industry. Five of the eight B2C commerce vendors in our research said they are using genAI to generate product information on product listing pages (PLPs) and product detail pages (PDPs). Why? GenAI enables retailers and brands to do these tasks at scale, decreases time to market, and validates accuracy across channels. Specific tasks mentioned include generating product names and descriptions as well as summarizing customer review sections.
- Most creative use cases are still in development. B2C commerce vendors told us they’re testing a variety of creative genAI use cases, including blog posts, email campaigns, videos, and other media assets. However, retailers have already been experimenting on their own. According to Forrester’s Consumer Digital Experiences Survey, 2023, 61% of digital experience professionals who indicated that their retail organization is using genAI with customers now use it to generate images for use in consumer communication.
Check out the full report for all the findings and advice on how to approach genAI in your B2C commerce solution. Still have questions? Let’s connect. Schedule an inquiry or guidance session with us!
