How Cognitive Computing Systems Will Change Retail

Expertise has become a requirement for everyone, regardless of what industry they are in. We expect our doctors to have complete knowledge in their field just as much as we expect the salespeople in a store to know all about their products and services. With the advancement of technology, companies are using people and computers to increase the level of expertise. However, with the amount of data these companies are collecting, it is difficult to analyze every aspect of it as 80% of data collected is unstructured and we have to find value within it. With programming, the engineer tells the computer what to do and how to operate. With quantitative analysis, the computer takes past data collected and interprets it to predict the behavior of the user. Companies such as Netflix use quantitative analysis to provide the user with movie suggestions based on their ratings of previous programs. Under a cognitive system, the computer has the ability to interpret and understand the intent of your questions. IBM has developed a cognitive system, Watson, with the ability to read the data it collects over time. Users are then able to ask questions against the data possessed by the cognitive system. This is different because with programming, the system does not learn about the user over a period of time and its search function is broad. While the program is able to provide search results, it is not precise to what the user was most likely looking for and pulls up hundreds of page results. Under a cognitive system, the computer is able to understand the purpose of the questions it is being presented with, and if it does not, it will constantly learn and train to understand these questions. A cognitive computer system is more accurate and precise in comparison to a quantitative analysis or programming system

A cognitive computing system is straightforward and engaging as the value of using it increases over time since it is learning about the user. This is helpful for the retail industry because consumers have high expectations from retailers these days. Consumers want the retailer to appeal to them specifically, in addition to being accurate with the information being presented to them. If retailers adapted to a cognitive website, the experience for the user would be beneficial as it would be customized for them. The user would check off declarative statements they find relevant to them and the retailer would have access to the user’s social media content. By the user providing this information, the retailer can observe and infer habits of the user in order to understand their wants better. The cognitive system will be able to provide suggestions not only on past purchases, but based on the content posted by the user on Facebook and Instagram. With the capability to read the images a user posts, the computer can make suggestions for a fur scarf if the user recently posted a picture of their new fur coat. A cognitive system also has a natural language search which operates by understanding the intent of the question based on demographics, keywords, purchase history and observations based on social media postings. This helps to eliminate the unnecessary recommendations a system under a quantitative analysis or programming would use. Retailers would be able to create the shopping experience around the consumer in order to make it more segmented.