Alibaba's intelligent retail experience

The integrated digital end-to-end shopping journey takes visitors through a complete virtual offline shopping experience. The powerful combination of previously stand-alone solutions creates one big opportunity for retailers to deliver greater value alongside better customer experience and satisfaction, while improving operational efficiency through the power and flexibility of Alibaba’s cloud infrastructure. The technology will be showcased for the first time in Europe during the Paris Retail Week Conference next week.

“This is the first time we introduce the end-to-end technology concept outside Asia for our European retail customers to witness first-hand the power of combining disconnected innovations into one smooth consumer shopping journey,” said Yeming Wang, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud EMEA.

“All the ‘cool ideas’ can now be brought into one shop – and in the right order – to take the futuristic shopping experience to a new level. The demo not only shows the convenience from the customers’ perspective, but also highlights the valuable data and business insight that can be collected, analysed and processed into actionable outcome. The complete experience and business benefits can be made possible with a powerful and flexible IT infrastructure like Alibaba Cloud.”

The end-to-end technology shopping experience includes:

• Magic Mirror: an augmented reality service that enables end-users to virtually try facial make-up before buying it. It integrates Alibaba Cloud operating system AliOS, OTA, Face Recognition technology, and data/intelligent terminal management

• VR Fitting Mirror: an augmented reality service that enables end-users to virtually try clothes on. The service is built on Alibaba cloud, using Elastic Compute Service, Object Storage Service, Content Delivery Network, Load Balance, Domain Name Service, Cloud Resolution DNS service, etc.

• Image Search: Based on Alibaba Cloud’s machine-learning and deep-learning technologies and Image API, it lets users search for similar products by simply taking and uploading a photo or a screenshot

• Cloud Shelf: an intelligent electronic display board. It sets up a screen in the store to display product information, promotion activities and other content, and provides a complete set of interactive solutions for the store. The service is hosted on Alibaba Cloud, using Alibaba Cloud Storage and Content Delivery Network technologies

• E-Price Tag: an intelligent way to display commodity information and assist stores in commodity marketing. The service is hosted on Alibaba Cloud to realise real-time control of the data displayed on price tag

• DataV: a powerful yet accessible data visualisation tool, featuring geographic information systems allowing for rapid interpretation of data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends. By integrating live dashboards, DataV can present and monitor business data simultaneously. It offers rich visual templates to meet exhibition analysis, business monitor, risk warning, geographical information analysis and other business requirements

• High-Quality Goods Tracking: an efficient way to track goods in a truly real-time manner. It helps retailers to understand the inventory turnover and provide targets for optimisation. Retails can adjust product schedules in a timely manner based on market inventory and turnover to avoid slow sales risks