Artificial Intelligence

IBM and digital commerce firm Fluid are collaborating on Fluid Expert Shopper (XPS), an app made with the IBM Watson artificial intelligence platform. Fluid XPS lets consumers ask highly specific questions, as they would a sales associate in a store, and receive personalized advice. The app will take advantage of Watson’s abilities to understand and learn from natural language, meaning it will engage in human-like conversations and provide product recommendations that take the context of customer questions into account.

New York - Dynamic retail marketing agency TPN is hiring analytics industry veteran Taymour Matin as managing director, data and analytics, a newly created position. Previously, analytics folded into TPN's planning and perspectives team, but as part of TPN's growth strategy, the new department has been created to better capitalize on the agency's proprietary research and technology-driven retail analytical capabilities.

Austin, Texas – Performance marketing solutions provider iProspect has launched "Search-Powered Social, a hosted service that utilizes data captured via paid search through Facebook's Website Custom Audiences offering. This allows marketers to build lookalike audiences on Facebook, which target segments resembling a brand's most loyal consumers.

By Bret Cunningham, president, BestFit Mobile

Charlottesville, Va. – Crutchfield Corp. has adopted the new integrated 360pi-Displaydata solution to realize in-store dynamic pricing. 360pi is working with Displaydata to incorporate Electronic Shelf Labeling (ESL) to give physical stores the ability to employ dynamic pricing.

The new solution is designed to provide retailers with the ability to automate and increase the frequency of in-store price updates without the cost, time, effort and error associated with manual price changes

Seattle – Amazon.com’s net income soared 32% during the first quarter of fiscal 2014, climbing to $108 million from $82 million the same quarter a year earlier. Net sales increased 23% to $19.74 billion in the first quarter, compared with $16.07 billion in first quarter 2013.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – Sears is offering a new service called Get Advice to members of its Shop Your Way omni-channel loyalty program. Shop Your Way members can post online requests for advice on shopping decisions and receive answers from both Sears associates and other loyalty members.

In addition to posting answers, members can also vote on answers they think are the most helpful. The service is designed to generate answers within minutes and currently is only open Shop Your Way members shopping at Sears and not Kmart.

Waconia, Minn. - Mackenthun's Fine Foods is rolling out a suite of nutrition tools through a partnership with ShopWell, a personalized nutrition app. Shoppers in Mackenthun's will be able to learn about the health benefits of foods, find healthier alternatives for their nutrition goals, and avoid allergens.