In April 2023, Zalando SE, the German online platform for fashion and lifestyle, operating in over 25 European markets including the UK, announced it will soon launch a ChatGPT-powered personal shopping assistant designed to help customers find the exact product that would suit their sense of style through Zalando’s massive portfolio of brands and products. Available on their app and web platforms, the first beta version will be enabled for select customers, with support in both English and German. This will be available in Germany, Ireland, UK and Austria. 

Technology to help make right fashion choice

This technology will introduce a new way to discover Zalando’s assortment and provide customers more intuitive fashion inspiration. For instance, a Zalando shopper can ask, “What should I wear to office’s Christmas party at Berlin, knowing that the entire board of directors will be present?” The ChatGPT-powered personal shopping assistant can understand the event is a formal one, picking up the cue from “entire board of directors” that it is at the height of winter in Berlin as it is a Christmas party and will send out a textual recommendation of what the selection of clothing and accessories could be. This could be combined in the future with customer preferences, such as brands they follow and products available in their sizes, to deliver a more personalised selection of products. 

Of course, Zalando is not a pioneer as Adidas, long before had introduced AI-powered platform Findmine to automatically generate complete recommended outfits when customers browsed an individual product. After leveraging the Findmine solution, Adidas merchandisers experienced 95 per cent drop in the time spent on its online 'Complete the Look' recommendation feature and increased the number of items included in outfits for customers by 960 per cent.

Versatile software a winner

ChatGPT seems to be empowered to possess all that is required to be a personal shopping assistant and much more. Indeed, the world of fashion can see ChatGPT as their partner now. Recently, Tian Su, VP Personalization and Recommendation at Zalando had said, “We are excited to be experimenting with ChatGPT to help our valued customers discover even more fashion they will love. This is just the beginning; we are committed to understanding our customers' needs and preferences even better, and we are eager to explore the potential that ChatGPT can bring to their shopping journey. As we continue testing and introducing new solutions, our focus remains on learning how our customers want to interact with our fashion assistant to provide them with the best possible experience."

The level of ChatGPT’s depth of personalisation is extraordinary. It uses data on current fashion trends, styles and individual preferences with the help of collaborative filtering that enables it to put forth a set of explained recommendations that are friendly to read and makes sense even budget-wise, should the customer’s input include a budget. The outcome is a highly-rewarding bespoke shopping journey in minimum time spent. 

Retail uses

While the big news item is Zalando’s personal shopping assistant, ChatGPT can do much more for retail businesses. It can help with a successful product launch, analyse customer feedback, reviews and social media conversations, competitor analysis, social media engagement, upselling and cross-selling during customer interactions, trend forecasting and providing localization and language support for global brands. 

The obvious versatility of this software can only provide a more refined, better informed environment for businesses to make the right decision to be competitive and stay relevant in an ever-changing fashion world.