Citing recent statistics, Albertsons says a typical grocery shopping trip takes the average shopper about 46 minutes. With the help of artificial intelligence, the retailer says it can reduce those minutes to as low as four.
Albertsons has introduced what it’s calling “a major milestone in its digital transformation journey,” launching the Albertsons AI shopping assistant. The websites of all Albertsons-owned stores – and soon, their apps – now feature a grocery shopping chatbot that will help shoppers get everything on their grocery lists in no time.
That’s because “it doesn’t just answer questions, it actively completes shopping tasks for customers,” Albertsons explains. You can tell it to reorder your weekly staples, or upload an image of a typed or written grocery list, and it will automatically add those items to your online cart for pickup or delivery. You can import a recipe, or ask it for recipe ideas, and automatically add every ingredient to your cart.
And you can ask the shopping assistant to help you save money, too. Savvy shoppers know how to plan meals based around what’s on sale this week and what items have coupons available. Albertsons’ shopping assistant can help you do that automatically.
You can try it for yourself at albertsons.com/assistant (or at the equivalent web address for Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco or any other Albertsons-owned store). A request to “find recipes that use items on sale this week at Albertsons” turns up several options. If you choose one, the ingredients will be added to your cart, with available promotions and coupons highlighted, showing you how much you can save. You can ask it to find coupons and deals for items you frequently buy. Or you can ask it to highlight items that offer the greatest possible savings this week.
What the shopping assistant can’t, or won’t, do is clip all of your coupons for you. A request to “clip all coupons for items I usually buy” is answered with, “I can’t clip coupons automatically for your usual items, but I can help you find current deals and promotions at Albertsons.” It can tell you about coupons that might interest you, but if you want to apply them, you’ll have to clip them yourself.
The Albertsons AI shopping assistant is the latest effort to merge shopping with artificial intelligence. Target and Walmart recently announced partnerships with ChatGPT, allowing shoppers to buy products from their stores directly within ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout feature. “For many years now, eCommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a statement. “Our goal is simple,” Target chief information and product officer Prat Vemana added. “Make every interaction feel as natural, helpful and inspiring as chatting with a friend.”
As for Albertsons, it plans to add even more features to its shopping assistant in the coming months, including app integration, voice recognition, and new tools like budget optimization and in-store aisle assistance to locate a specific product on the shelves.
And the more you use the shopping assistant, the better it will know your habits and preferences. Over time, it will be able to “enhance future interactions with personalized product and recipe recommendations featuring our latest deals and coupons,” Albertsons’ Digital Customer Experience SVP Jill Pavlovich said in a statement. “Our goal at Albertsons Companies is to make our customers’ lives easier, and by implementing AI-powered features across the customer journey from discovery to purchase, we are delivering an experience that’s faster, easier and more enjoyable.”
And if it really can shave your shopping time down to four minutes, while saving you money in the process – even better.
Image sources: Albertsons/Mockuper
