The world’s largest retailer is using Jetblack, a money-losing personal-shopping service, to develop artificial intelligence to compete with e-commerce giant Amazon.
Jetblack is a personal shopping company that is targeted at mothers in New York. It was launched in the summer of 2018 by a newcomer, Walmart. Walmart is the world's biggest retailer by revenue, with $514 billion in annual sales. Members of Jetblack are invited by Walmart or referred by current members, but the only required thing is that members need to have a doorman to join. Once members join, an agent is sent to the house to take an inventory of what products the member uses, giving them a database of frequent purchases. The members are also spending an average of $300 a week for products due to the ease of the service Jetblack provides and encourages more frequent purchases through text messages. The agents assigned to reply to text messages do it right away and at night there are set automated text messages so that the person can know that agents are not available to help but will do as soon as they can. Jetblack agents make suggestions to shoppers and then order what they decide they want.
Jetblack uses agents to go through the orders received and couriers fetch the items, bring them back, wrap them, and deliver them usually on the same day. Walmart is doing this because of a large competitor it has: Amazon.com Inc. Amazon has Prime which more than 100 million people use. Walmart is fighting for a larger online presence by buying small online retailers, like Bonobos a men's apparel company. In addition to that, Jetblack is just one of Walmart's small online investments wanting to target wealthy shoppers.
Workers stock up on frequently purchased items by going to a Jet.com warehouse or Walmart stores in New Jersey because New York has no physical Walmart stores.
I chose this article because I love doing online shopping so it is interesting to see that online shopping is being made easier just by sending a text message and someone sending suggestions to choose from. Although Jetblack is only in New York, it would be nice to see it spread out over the US.
This article relates to marketing because Walmart is doing everything it can to promote online sales by inviting members to join Jetblack. It is doing it so it can get more publicity that will eventually lead to an increase in their e-commerce.
Karla Gorostieta
Works Cited: By Sarah Nassauer | Photographs by Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal
March 21, 2019 11:23 a.m. ET https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-builds-a-secret-weapon-to-battle-amazon-for-retails-future-11553181810
This is so interesting, wow!
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