ARMONK, N.Y., April
22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagine having access to your
own personal shopping assistant anytime, anywhere. Thanks to a
partnership between IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Fluid Inc., the ultimate
shopping advisor, powered by Watson, is poised to transform
the consumer shopping experience.
Together, IBM and Fluid Inc., are working to redefine today's
e-commerce experience by evolving it beyond the traditional
criteria of price, convenience and selection, and adding a
transformational new factor: the expertise and personalized advice
of an in-store sales representative.
The consumer shopping experience is ripe for Watson's ability to interact naturally with
people, while serving as an advisor that thinks, learns and
empowers its users with insights unlocked from data. A recent study
from the IBM Institute for Business Value of more than 30,000
global consumers shows that 40 percent of shoppers use social,
location and mobile technologies for information gathering, and yet
are not likely to use them to purchase products.
So what is hindering that sizable share of the consumer market
from making purchase decisions from their devices? To start, the
current state of online and mobile shopping yields a
time-consuming, inefficient experience, as consumers comb through
websites for information, link by link, or enter keywords into
search engines and hope for the best. Today, 50 percent of
consumers spend 75 percent or more of their total shopping time
conducting online research, according to data from the e-tailing
group and PowerReviews.
Something crucial is missing from the typical online and mobile
experience: the thoughtful help of an expert sales representative,
who is knowledgeable, relatable and ready to advise you on
important purchase decisions.
All of that is about the change. IBM and Fluid Inc., are
embarking on a new mission to transform the way consumers shop,
through personalized, digital experiences with a personal shopping
concierge that understands and advises its users on key purchase
decisions. IBM and Fluid's collaboration aims to spark an "industry
first," as together they remove the pain points of digital
commerce, and replace them with the best of what in-store retail
shopping has always offered.
The solution: the Fluid Expert Shopper (XPS) made with IBM
Watson, an app that gives consumers the power to ask the app highly
specific questions, as they would a sales associate in a store, and
receive personalized advice that truly satisfies their needs.
In partnership with The North Face and other consumer brands,
Fluid XPS will take advantage of Watson's ability to answer consumers'
questions and learn from their responses, engage in real-time
conversations and then tailor suggestions for products in a rich
and relevant manner. Watson will
understand the context of its users' questions, and continuously
learn about their needs based on the information they share.
As an example, one could ask Watson for advice on what outdoor gear is
best-suited for a five-day, June hiking adventure in Phoenix. Fluid XPS would call upon
Watson's understanding of natural
language to identify clues from the user's question suggesting
particular needs around weather, terrain and trail conditions.
When complete, Fluid XPS will draw on data, including the
brand's product information, user reviews and online expert
publications through IBM Watson, to provide consumers with informed
recommendations according to their needs and desires. Consumers
will receive valuable insights in making smart, satisfying
purchases and be able to interact with Watson on desktops, tablets and smartphones
for the first time.
To further advance this new e-commerce dynamic, the Watson Group
is today announcing a new milestone in its collaboration with
Fluid, to ensure they can go to market faster and bring their
vision to life in a range of markets. Drawing from $100 million that IBM has earmarked for direct
investments to fuel a new class of cognitive apps, the Watson Group
is making an investment in Fluid, Inc., to help deliver the
first-ever cognitive assistant for online shoppers into the
marketplace.
In creating an app that interacts naturally with users,
understands the context within their needs and learns to improve
how it provides assistance from a user's mobile device, IBM and
Fluid are tapping into a crucial, yet unmet marketplace need.
"By tapping into IBM Watson's cognitive intelligence, Fluid is
infusing the personalized, interactive feel of an in-store
conversation into every digital shopping interaction," said
Mike Rhodin, Senior Vice President,
IBM Watson Group. "This is what positive market disruption looks
like, and it's a key example of how a new era of cognitive
applications will revolutionize how decisions are made by consumers
and businesses alike."
With a vision to forever transform the online and mobile
commerce space, IBM and Fluid aim to bring back the era of
personalized customer service, by accelerating the consumer
shopping experience into a new era of cognitive computing.
"Fluid and IBM are purposely involving consumers in this new era
of computing. An era in which people no longer type best-guess
keywords into a retail website's search box and hope for meaningful
results; instead people ask specific questions based on explicit
needs and get expert, personalized, information-driven responses to
guide buying decisions. This is the same experience we have in
real-world stores with great sales reps every day and is what's
missing from digital retail," said Kent
Deverell, CEO, Fluid, Inc.
Fluid was one of the first organizations to join IBM's ecosystem
of developers, entrepreneurs and growth companies of all sizes that
are building apps and services infused with Watson's cognitive computing intelligence. As
a Watson Ecosystem partner, Fluid is creating its cognitive
technology in the Watson Developer Cloud, which provides a toolkit
and sandbox for building cognitive apps, as well as access to
Watson's Application Programming
Interface (API).
Pioneering a New Era of Computing and Spurring
Innovation
IBM Watson represents a new era of computing, in which apps and
systems interact with human users more naturally, augment our
knowledge with Big Data insights, and learn to improve how they
assist us.
Fueled by innovation from a mission to transform industries and
professions, Watson is uniquely
positioned at the forefront of the new era of computing, evidenced
by an unmatched demonstration of what cognitive systems can bring
to transform decision-making. IBM is delivering a range of
cloud-based products and services to clients in industries such as
banking, healthcare, insurance and retail.
In January, 2014, IBM launched the IBM Watson Group, a new
business unit dedicated to the development and commercialization of
cloud-delivered cognitive advisors. The move signifies a strategic
shift by IBM to accelerate into the marketplace a new class of
software, services and apps that think, improve by learning, and
discover insights from massive amounts of Big Data.
IBM is investing more than $1
billion into the Watson Group, focusing on research,
development and bringing cloud-delivered cognitive applications and
services to market. This includes $100
million earmarked for direct investment to support IBM's
ecosystem of start-ups and businesses building cognitive apps made
with Watson. Currently more than
1,900 organizations and entrepreneurial individuals have shared
their ideas for creating cognitive apps that redefine how
businesses and consumers make decisions.
About IBM
For more information on IBM Watson, please visit
www.ibmwatson.com
To join the social discussion about Watson include the hashtag #ibmwatson
Follow Watson on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/ibmwatson
For more insights on this story, please read this post on IBM's
A Smarter Planet blog.
To watch a video about today's news, please click here.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO
John Natale
IBM Media Relations
617-875-3658
jdnatale@us.ibm.com
Leigh Cashman
Fluid, Inc. Media Relations
(212) 475-6301
lcashman@powellny.com
SOURCE IBM