Waitrose is personalizing online shopping with AI

Waitrose is the latest supermarket retailer in the UK to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to create more personalized experiences for shoppers.

Established in 1904, Waitrose is one of the UK’s most popular supermarkets. With 329 shops, including 65 "little Waitrose" convenience stores, it holds a 5.1 percent share of the UK grocery market. Beyond the UK, Waitrose exports own-label and branded goods to more than 50 countries.

The company partnered with Netcore Unbxd, a provider of AI solutions aimed at ecommerce industries. The partnership allows Waitrose to improve its online search and browsing experience by learning from customers’ past purchasing patterns and behaviors, including their browsing habits, product favorites and choice of brands.

Research has shown that personalization is important to consumers, with 74 percent of customers feeling frustrated by website content that is not targeted towards them. A report by McKinsey also found companies that focus on personalization can increase their revenue by five to 15 percent.

"We know that our customers are busy and need to be able to quickly fill their online shopping trolley with minimal effort,” commented Laura Burbedge, Waitrose director of online. “Through working with Unbxd we have already seen a significant improvement in customers satisfaction with our search feature, with more personalized results."

Using AI to find trends in food

This isn’t the first time Waitrose has turned to AI. In September 2023 the supermarket launched a 26-dish Japanese menu range developed with input from AI platform Tastewise.

The tool analyzed online menus and posts on social media, finding that discussions about Japanese cuisine had increased by 15 percent over a nine-month period. It also noted a five percent increase in the number of restaurants adding Japanese items to their menus.

Tastewise was even able to identify specific trending flavours (in this case yuzu and ponzu) as well as popular cooking methods, by analyzing the hashtags people were using in their social media posts.

Personalization in stores to enhance customer service

Last year, the supermarket’s parent company The John Lewis Partnership signed a strategic partnership with Google Cloud, enabling the retailer to expand its use of AI and machine learning to help it improve customer service levels in store.

Zak Mian, chief transformation and technology officer at The John Lewis Partnership, gave an insight into what this could mean for customers in the future: “Imagine a world where a customer can use an image scanning feature in their John Lewis app to show our home design stylists a room they’re looking to furnish, which tells us all we need to know about the intricacies of the space, layout and measurements.

“Not only does it save customers a lot of time and hassle, but even before the appointment we can take inspiration from their unique preferences and give tailored recommendations that can even complement products they already have. We’re looking forward to an era of fresh innovation.”

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