Shoppers today have more ways to get inspired, research and buy than ever before. As a result, the shopping journey is becoming increasingly unique to each individual. To keep up, retailers need to be agile and connected. AI can help marketers reach customers across this fluid journey, while freeing up time for creativity, judgment and empathy.
Here, Kellie Fitzgerald, managing director of retail at Google, talks to Fairchild Studio about the evolving shopper journey and how to harness the power of Google AI to enable more creativity and heart in marketing.
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Fairchild Studio: What are shoppers looking for from retailers today?
Kellie Fitzgerald: Shoppers are overwhelmed by the endless choices available to them across digital, physical, virtual and social channels. This paradox of choice can lead to frustration, as shoppers are forced to give up other options when they select one. Just consider the shoe category: there are 863 shoe manufacturers in the U.S. alone.
The majority of shoppers, 92 percent to be exact, make purchase decisions based on emotion. Therefore, retailers must focus on what matters most to shoppers: building a beloved brand with an exceptional shopping experience that appeals to the hearts of shoppers. By appealing to powerful emotional drivers, shoppers will feel more satisfied with their purchases and less overwhelmed by unlimited choice.
How are Google’s tools uniquely created to help retailers show up in a meaningful way?
Despite the increasingly complex path to purchase, one constant remains: people still turn to Google to discover and shop for what they care about. In fact, people are shopping across Google more than a billion times a day2! Search and YouTube are key shopping resources for customers who are switching from discovery to consideration and purchase across digital, apps and physical stores. For example, “shop with me” videos on YouTube have grown in popularity by over 35 percent year-over-year,3 signaling shoppers are looking for inspiration through trusted sources like influencers.
Our mission at Google has always been to be helpful. And for the retail industry, this translates into connecting retailers with the millions of shoppers who turn to Google for help in their shopping journey.
How do Google’s AI-powered tools help retailers?
Retailers can no longer manage the millions of touchpoints in the shopping journey through manual methods alone. They currently spend an enormous amount of time on campaign management, reporting and other time-intensive tasks. AI is the new helper that can interpret billions of unique contextual signals and cast a wide net to reach shoppers seamlessly moving across channels.
This means that time historically spent on these manual tasks is free so retailers can focus on what really matters to shoppers: building a differentiated and beloved brand, creating amazing creative, and designing experiments to better understand their customers.
What excites you the most about the shift to AI?
I was recently inspired to rethink the balance between the time I spend analyzing and thinking versus the time I spend following my heart. Intentional imbalance, tilting slightly more towards following my heart is an aspiration of mine.
Until this moment, I viewed AI as a tool to improve work. Now, I see its potential to help me achieve this aspiration of intentional imbalance. AI can help us brainstorm ideas and accelerate our productivity, freeing us to follow our hearts and get back to the creative work that humans do best. For example, Bard can now summarize emails and help provide suggested next steps. I’ve used this to summarize emails from my kids’ school to help give next steps. So now, instead of spending my time reading and sorting emails from school, I can actually spend time with my kids! This promise excites me both personally and professionally.
How can retailers leverage AI during the holiday peak shopping season?
Throughout the holiday season, shoppers exhibit distinct mindsets and behaviors: deliberate, deal-seeking, determined and devoted. These mindsets transcend demographics and shoppers naturally move between them. As shoppers shift between different mindsets and channels, it can be challenging to reach them with the right message at the right time. AI-powered tools enable retailers to connect with shoppers more consistently throughout their journey, ultimately helping to turn interested shoppers into holiday purchases.
Think of AI as your holiday helper, ensuring that you don’t miss a single opportunity to win over holiday shoppers.
For retailers starting to explore the value proposition of Google’s AI-powered tools, what would you say is the most important for them to understand?
AI is much more than the latest buzzword. Yes, AI can do some heavy lifting when it comes to driving new customer connections, building high-quality creative and making confident decisions grounded in insights. But the potential of AI goes much further. It can help retailers focus on what matters most to shoppers and the ultimate success of their businesses. Most transformative will be the shift in how we spend our time, allowing us to focus on what humans do best: using our hearts.
(1) Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Martin Lindstrom; (2) Google Internal Data, Global, 2023; (3) Youtube Internal Data, Global, 2022 Vs. 2021