Amazon is increasingly claiming territory once held exclusively by department stores - and it's doing so again, essentially placing a dressing room in your house. The retail giant has officially launched service for Prime members that allows them to try on the latest styles before they buy at no upfront charge. Customers have seven days to decide what they like and only pay for what they keep. Amazon announced Tuesday, June 20, 2017, that it's testing a new service for its Prime members that lets customers try on the latest styles before they buy at no upfront charge, take seven days to decide and only pay for what they keep Shipments arrive in a re-sealable box with a pre-paid label for returns. The company had been gradually rolling out the service to Prime members in the US over the course of the year.

Amazon Prime members can once again look forward to getting steep discounts gadgets, things for your home, travel gear, and more. While Amazon's Prime Day is not as big as Black Friday (yet), at least you don't have to endure the psychological trauma of being pushed around in large crowds and waiting in long lines out the door at brick and mortar shops. And an added benefit -- without major gift giving holidays coming up, as Amazon puts it, this is a day to focus on yourself. Prime Day is a time Amazon Prime members can enjoy lightning deals, price cuts, and promotions. Though the exact date hasn't been announced yet, it has taken place every year in July.

The search giant is building alliances as it races Amazon to develop new ways for people to shop, from voice-enabled smart speakers to faster and more convenient home grocery delivery. Google last year teamed up with Walmart Inc. WMT 0.73% to let users order a selection of the retailer's products on Google's virtual assistant and speakers, a challenge to Amazon's Alexa service. Earlier this month, Google joined with Carrefour SA, Europe's largest retailer, to offer same-day delivery of perishable groceries to people's homes in France. The deal announced Monday also could help Google boost advertising revenue, which has been threatened by Amazon recently as businesses increasingly shift ads to the internet shopping site. The JD investment comes as Google seeks to strengthen its connections in China.

Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday that it has partnered with Marriott International Inc to help increase guest access to amenities with Alexa, through its voice-controlled device Echo, in an attempt to expand its presence in the hospitality industry. Alexa for hospitality would assist in providing services ranging from ordering room service to requesting housekeeping or calling the concierge for dinner recommendations without picking up the phone. The company said the partnership will start this summer at Marriott's select properties and the service will be available by invitation to other hotel chains. Several media reports had said that Marriott had tested both Apple Inc's Siri and Amazon's Alexa to select what was best suited for its hotels. Marriott did not comment specifically on Apple, but said it has "great relationships with a number of technology companies and is always open to exploring opportunities to innovate and better the guest experience."

These and other efforts might help, but brick-and-mortar retailers have learned they need to do more to collect customer data in order to lure them away from the "one click" convenience Amazon offers. "It's all about trying to understand who these people are that are spending money," retail sales consultant Bob Phibbs, CEO of The Retail Doctor, told Salon. "It's much different than in the old days where you take out an ad targeting a million people and hope some of them buy from you. Now it's about owning the customer who has bought from you." As anyone who uses its site well knows, Amazon has been automatically directing its repeat buyers toward items they're more likely to purchase based on data it has collected about them.

Bangalore: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next big step for retail and FMCG companies following the implementation of advanced big data and analytics (BDA) solutions, which can unlock huge data volumes in an automated way in real-time and ultimately lead to maximum profitability, according to GlobalData. The company's Disruptor Database revealed that although retailers have grown to their current size by capitalizing on profitable bits of digitalization, they are often challenged in understanding what their customers need at scale. There is a colossal amount of customer data with enterprises, but only a handful are able to generate value deemed from low conversion rates of below 5% overall. This broadens the scope for retailers and consumer goods companies to use predictive analytics to enhance decisions related to supply chain management, customer behavior, staff allocation and the likelihood of goods being damaged, lost or returned. "While most analysis related to understanding market trends, achieving greater customer personalization, and improving operational efficiency can be performed with BDA methods, AI in many cases is less cost intensive and faster - at times even instant.. Intelligent machine learning systems can replace expensive armies of data scientists and provide solutions or product recommendations in an automated way. The timing of the analytics is crucial, since opportunities for cost savings or additional sales are frequently limited to minutes or even seconds," said Rena Bhattacharyya, Technology Research Director - GlobalData.

In the Create a Question and Answer Bot with Amazon Lex and Amazon Alexa blog post, we showed you how you could create a QnABot (pronounced "Q and A Bot") for a situation in which your users have questions and you have answers. Now, what if this situation were reversed? What if you could ask users questions using quizzes, polls, surveys, and tests? These are valuable ways to drive user engagement and collect actionable feedback. Our most recent QnABot update includes the new Questionnaire Bot feature, which allows content designers to rapidly create quizzes for users and integrate them with existing QnABot content.

Why it matters: Alibaba says that over the last year, it has redone about 1 million mom and pop shops like the Huangs' across China. It has done the same with about a hundred superstores. Big and small, these outlets buy all their goods through Alibaba's platform and pay using its affiliate Alipay app. A picture of the future: These stores are examples of an expanding battleground among China's cutthroat tech giants, and petri-dishes of the future of business around the world. Among the central ideas is that in the future, shoppers will not view e-commerce and brick-and-mortar as distinct things, but as a single merged organism -- as simply "commerce."

Whether Father's Day, Mother's Day, a birthday or simply "just because," buying gifts can feel like counting grains of sand -- i.e., it's not easy. Meanwhile, there are 250,ooo -- 300,000 e-commerce companies in the U.S. all vying for the attention of shoppers. How are consumers possibly expected to decide where to spend their hard-earned money? And how can retailer s create a more personalized shopping experience, rather than facing the same demise as the 6,700 retail locations that closed their doors in 2017? In short, the retail sector is in a sticky wicket.

Voice shopping using smart speakers and smartphone apps is starting to gain traction among consumers, opening up a new "conversational commerce" channel and potentially disrupting the retail sector. Devices such as Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers and Google Home, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to respond to voice commands, are offering new choices to consumers who are looking for more convenient ways to order goods and services. Voice shopping is expected to jump to US$40 billion (S$54 billion) annually in 2022 in the United States, from US$2 billion today, according to a survey this year by OC&C Strategy Consultants. "People are liking the convenience and natural interaction of using voice," said Ms Victoria Petrock of the research firm eMarketer. "Computing in general is moving more toward voice interface because the technology is more affordable, and people are responding well because they don't have to type."