Mastercard is launching a new generative ai shopping tool called “Shopping muse” which is designed to help users get personalized product recommendations. The tool is powered by Dynamic Yield, a personalization company acquired by Mastercard in April 2022. Mastercard says the idea behind Shopping Muse is to “revolutionize the way customers search and discover products in a retailer's digital catalog” .
The tool can take users' colloquial language and turn it into personalized product recommendations. Shopping Muse is able to understand modern trends and phrases like “cottagecore” or “beach formal.” You can ask the tool questions like “What should I wear to a summer wedding?” or “Can you recommend pieces for a minimalist capsule wardrobe?”
To provide personalized recommendations, Shopping Muse analyzes the context of the user's shopping experience, the direct questions asked, and the content of the conversation. The algorithms use data from the retailer's product catalog, along with shopper behavior on the site, such as clicking on certain products and adding products to carts. The algorithms also analyze the known and real-time preferences demonstrated by the consumer.
If a user is logged in, the algorithms can consider their shopping and browsing history with that retailer, including purchases made in person that they have connected to their account by providing the cashier with their phone number or email, for example.
Image credits: MasterCard
In addition to being able to help users search by phrase, Shopping Muse can also recommend items even when the user can't find the words to describe what they're looking for. Mastercard explains that “using advanced built-in image recognition tools, retailers can recommend relevant products based on visual similarities to others, even if they lack appropriate technical labels.”
Although fashion is the first use case for Mastercard's new tool, the company says this technology could be extended to other categories, such as furniture and groceries.
“Personalization gives people the shopping experiences they want, and ai-powered innovation is the key to unlocking immersive, personalized online shopping,” Ori Bauer, CEO of Dynamic Yield by Mastercard, said in a statement. . “By leveraging the power of generative ai in Shopping Muse, we meet consumer standards and make shopping smarter and seamless than ever.”
Mastercard says retailers must adapt to changing demands by embracing the technology, noting that more than one in four retailers already use generative ai solutions, while another 13% plan to adopt them in the next year.
The new tool is one of many generative ai purchasing tools launched last year. For example, Google now allows users to receive ai-holiday-gifts/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>ai-generated gift recommendations in Search, while Microsoft's Bing can automatically generate buying guides when you use a query like “college supplies.” We will probably see more similar tools in the future, as Gartner recently launched a report predicting that 80% of customer service and support organizations will apply generative ai technology in some form by 2025.