Meet ‘Lazzie’: AI seen to enhance online shopping experience

Howard Wang, Lazada Group chief technology officer —JORDEENE B. LAGARE

Global e-commerce company Lazada is banking on the combination of commerce and technology as it anticipates a sustained double-digit growth in the Philippine e-commerce market.

“Our goal is to help more local brands and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) adopt e-commerce, and really experience how their businesses can grow online with Lazada,” Carlos Barrera, Lazada Philippines CEO, tells the Inquirer in an email correspondence.

Lazada has introduced its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual shopping assistant called Al Lazzie as it hopes to create a more seamless online shopping experience for both users and sellers.

Al Lazzie is the enhanced version of LazzieChat that Lazada rolled out last year to respond to users’ shopping queries. It is the first e-commerce AI chatbot of its kind in Southeast Asia.

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It has four distinct features: providing personalized recommendations based on the users’ preferences, allowing users to try on different types of clothes using virtual models, generating a tailored product listing that highlights key features and summarizing product reviews to help users make informed purchasing decisions.

“Our primary goal for generative AI tools like Lazzie is to make sure we are enhancing the end-to-end user experience,” Barrera says.

“Our hope is that when customers see and experience the value of personalized recommendations, personalized deals and promos and better customer support, we are helping to build trust and loyalty to the app,” he adds.

Higher conversion rate

Lazada Group chief technology officer Howard Wang notes “a significant increase” in the conversion rate (or the number of users or website visitors) by more than 30 percent after utilizing technological innovations such as AI in its business.

Speaking at a media event in Singapore, Wang says Lazada sees two major opportunities with the rollout of GenAI features on the Lazada app in the coming years.

“The first one is the shopping experience … I think it would be totally revamped, maybe two or three years from now,” he says, adding that the new AI feature would help a user navigate a large amount of our products on the platform.

Wang also says that from a merchant’s perspective, Lazada expects “a huge potential opportunity for them to reduce the overhead and also ensure profitability.”

In the same event, Lazada launched a white paper jointly written with market research firm Kantar to delve into the usage and adoption of AI on e-commerce platforms.

The white paper surveyed more than 6,000 shoppers across six Southeast Asian markets, including the Philippines.

Findings showed that 52 percent of respondents cite convenient shopping as a reason for embracing AI in their personal lives, while 83 percent express willingness to pay more for AI-powered shopping experiences.

Furthermore, it revealed that 63 percent of respondents believe that AI is widely adopted in online shopping, with AI chatbots, translations and visual product searches recognized as key AI features in online shopping platforms.