Lead Product Manager at Nike
Q: What potential do you believe Generative AI has in transforming the online shopping experience?
Online retailers are always on the lookout to make shopping our sites and apps easier. AI has a great potential to ease a lot of the overhead that consumers face, especially those who are less technically savvy. AI chat could provide real time context aware answers to inquiries that are not possible from a pre-programmed set of responses in a traditional, static chat-bot. I also see a place for AI to recommend products that may suit a consumer’s needs, either something different than what they might be looking at in the moment or something complementary. Current recommendation engines are good, but AI powered systems could bring this to a whole new level.
Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge for brands in your space?
I see big challenges ahead: Brands in our space are seeing a shift in consumer behavior. Top brands are having to work harder to get and maintain customers in the US and Europe. Consumers are influenced as much by their online social apps as any brand specific site or retail shopping outlet. Brands always want to be where their consumers are, and it takes constant vigilance to read where that is and find meaningful ways to reach people where they are.
In China, there is a heavy nationalist movement that could have lasting impacts on non-China brands. So, brands in most any space that have leaned into the China market have strong headwinds to navigate to maintain success.
Q: Your specialties are in ecommerce, online stores, product management and others. You have witnessed this space evolve since the early 2000s. What has been the most transformational change, and how do you think that will impact the future of ecommerce?
In my observation, the smartphone has been the most transformational change in ecommerce during my time in the space. When mobile web browsing and mobile apps came about, shopping changed from a sit-down and think about it process to a read, research, and shop on-the-go experience. Mobile & app traffic to ecommerce sites easily eclipses traditional desktop, laptop, and tablet traffic. Buying from device offers distinct advantages such as saved payment and address information, not to mention all the shopping integrations that are coming to social media apps. In the next ten years, I believe social apps, influencer supported, and other non-traditional commerce apps will take larger and larger percentages of consumers’ wallets. Traditional brand and shopping apps will have to play catch-up and include these deeply social and somewhat addictive features to keep market share of shoppers in their space.