Alibaba’s AI Fashion Consultant Helps It Set a New Singles’ Day Record - MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609452/alibabas-ai-fashion-consultant-helps-it-set-a-new-singles-day-reco
https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/chinashoppingx2760.jpg?cx=0&cy=314&cw=2714&ch=1526&sw=1200 If the technology becomes more widely used—currently Alibaba has installed this system free-of-charge at 13 stores across China—it could transform commerce by giving consumers an incentive to visit brick-and-mortar stores at a time when offline retail in both China and the U.S. are in decline.
Alibaba is going all in to “digitize the offline retail world,” according to the company’s CEO, Daniel Zhang. During the shopping festival, people who visited a select group of restaurants and stores in China were able to play an AR game akin to Pokémon Go using Alibaba’s apps to earn promotion coupons.
“In the age of mobile Internet, the merging of online and offline [retail] is a trend,” says Jianzhen Peng, secretary general of the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, explaining why e-commerce platforms like Alibaba would want to branch out into offline retail. “Consumers don’t distinguish between online and offline as long as it fulfills their needs.”
Another Chinese e-commerce giant, JD.com, plans to launch a brick-and-mortar grocery store called 7Fresh that offers online-style speedy delivery.