For Singles' Day, the Chinese online retail group Alibaba declared the Global Shopping Festival on 11.11.2018. The tenth Singles' Day was a huge success: as the company announced, the Chinese group sold goods worth 10 billion US dollars in the first hour alone on Sunday morning. The previous year's sales were overtaken in the afternoon and stood at just over 30 billion dollars at the end of the day.
Alibaba is the world's largest e-commerce marketplace with $248 billion in transactions, more than eBay and Amazon combined. The Chinese are heavily funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Alibaba has invested in seven research labs to date, which focus on AI, ML, network security and Natural Language Processing (NLP).The Alibaba AI algorithm, mainly powered by Deep Learning (DL) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), helps sellers recommend products for shoppers and then communicates with retailers to increase inventory and keep up with demand. In this context, it is interesting to note that most purchases were made via mobile devices. This of course awaits retailers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
According to preliminary data, it appears that shoppers are avoiding the once long lines and midnight shopping to shop from their desktops, smartphones and tablets on Black Friday. The boom in digital sales grows every year. Conversion rates also achieved double-digit growth on both desktop and mobile. Mobile was the driving force, contributing 60 per cent of website traffic and about 41 per cent of online orders, according to Salesforce. Amazon, which will additionally support the shopping wave with Cyber Monday, traditionally publishes sales figures later in the fourth quarter. High growth rates are also expected here.
With more shoppers choosing to buy online than in-store, it is becoming more important for retailers to understand the behaviour and motivations of their online customers. The Commerce has long discovered that sales from discount offers and online promotions beyond the Singles Day-Black Friday-Cyber Monday boundaries are often one of the biggest campaigns against Amazon's supremacy online Commerce .The key to competing, outside of keywords, lies in personalised campaigns and fostering brand loyalty that keeps consumers engaged. According to Salesforce, nearly 30 per cent of sales came from shopping recommendations tailored to consumer behaviour using AI. Mind you, here too, sales and successes are only possible through quite extensive product data description, so that buyers can find their desired products faster via search engines and search options of online shops. AI is therefore involved in the personalised campaigns, in the shopping recommendations, in the processing of the purchases and also in the creation of the product data.
AI grew to become a very important component in Commerce , as the handling of various customer requirements, search filter activities and data volume cannot be achieved with off-the-shelf software. Alibaba and Amazon are leading the way and achieving huge revenues. Now the challenge for the general Commerce in the future is to likewise rely on the advantages of AI and to successfully expand this development not only on these proclaimed shopping days, but also outside the pre-Christmas and sales season.
One of the reasons Alibaba and other Chinese tech companies like Tencent and Baidu, collectively known as BAT, are making extraordinary strides in artificial intelligence is the Chinese government 's support, investment and commitment to becoming the dominant AI player in the world. With plans to build a $1 billion AI industry by 2030, China is on track to overtake the United States as the world's technology leader. In general, as AI develops, all active traders and marketplaces that are not closed to the new technology gain these advantages.
