1. Data & Insights

Generative AI and the Future of Product Development

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Imagine you’re shopping for a new dress. You have a vision of your colorful, dream dress, but you haven’t been able to find it anywhere online or in-store. But what if you could create it yourself with the help of artificial intelligence (AI)?

Generative AI is fundamentally reshaping the product development process, offering many unique opportunities for brands.

Learn how AI is becoming a critical part of product development, including real-world examples from top brands that are leveraging the technology in their digital shelf strategies.

What’s AI’s Role in Product Development?

Here are some examples of the most common ways that AI is being implemented in the product development process.

Customer Feedback Used to Influence Product Ideas and Updates

AI is a great tool for analyzing customer feedback to identify pain points and new product requests. Feedback can come from various channels, including product ratings and reviews, focus groups, social listening campaigns, and more.

Brands can use AI to turn data points into insights on:

  • popular trends;
  • new product ideas;
  • product optimization ideas;
  • competitive insights; and
  • other useful market information

Market Research and Trend Analysis Supports Product Development

AI can be used to collect and analyze market research and trend analysis to support the product development process. Additionally, brands can stay up-to-speed strategically by gaining access to the latest market insights and shifting buying behaviors.

Product Design and Prototyping Support

Brands are leveraging AI to support the product design and prototyping process, as well as AI algorithms to aid with product ideation and brainstorming.

Many brands are anticipating future product creation wants and needs by including first-party customer data, customer reviews, and market trends and insights in their prompts.

Improved Product Personalization and Customization

Personalization in e-commerce is a growing trend. Generative AI can be leveraged to cater to customers’ individual product needs and tastes, helping them curate and design products within their unique guidelines.

Examples of Brands Using AI for Product Development

Several legacy brands have already implemented (or are planning to implement) AI within their product development process. With this test-and-learn approach, brands can capture consumers’ attention with innovative ideas.

Here are some examples of brands using AI to perfect their product development process.

The Coca-Cola Company Uses AI to Predict the Future

The Coca-Cola Company wanted to understand “how fans envision the future through emotions, aspirations, colors, flavors, and more.” So it released a limited-edition flavor, Coca-Cola Y3000, made with both human and artificial intelligence. The brand collected worldwide customer data and combined it with AI insights to develop a new flavor that predicts the taste buds of the future — offering customers a unique opportunity to “taste the year 3000 today.”

Estée Lauder Accelerates its Product Development Process With AI

Makeup brand Estée Lauder continues to expand its use of generative AI to improve the customer experience across its brand sites.

The company has noticed the importance and influence of trends — such as viral products on TikTok — on customer tastes in beauty and cosmetics and is increasing its investment in generative AI.

For Estée Lauder, product development is about to speed up.

AI-Driven Product Development Boosts Digital Shelf Success

Brands have an enormous opportunity to harness the power of AI to supercharge the product development process.

Keep up with the customers’ evolving demands and stay ahead of the competition by delivering engaging shopping experiences — full of products consumers want now and in the future — to drive digital shelf success.

Julie Marobella is the executive vice president of product at Salsify, a unified product experience management company.

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