Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from FierceRetail, an e-newsletter and website covering the latest retail technology news and analysis.
1-800-Flowers is using artificial intelligence to provide gift suggestions and product recommendations with GWYN (Gifts When You Need), an AI version of a personal shopper.
Powered by IBM's Watson, GWYN is based on Fluid Expert Personal Shopper, a software platform designed to disrupt traditional search with an automated conversation between shoppers and a digital shopping expert that guides them to the right products, according to the company.
Unlike other product recommendation engines, Gwyn can understand and then ask contextually relevant questions to guide the shopper through a personalized experience and recommend the best possible gift.
Here's how it works: A shopper types in a search query looking for a gift. Gwyn then asks a number of qualifying questions about the occasion, sentiment and recipient to best tailor the gift suggestion.
"The world's data is growing at a tremendous rate, and the retail industry is at the forefront of tapping into this unstructured information to better cater to the modern consumer," said Keith Mercier, IBM Watson retail leader, in a statement. "By using Watson, the cognitive capabilities of GWYN are enabling 1-800-Flowers.com to offer a more personalized and intuitive online shopping experience, and foster new levels of brand engagement."
The program works with desktop and mobile interfaces. In March, The North Face became the first retailer to integrate Watson into its mobile app, using AI to return better search results.