Fashion preference is a fuzzy concept that depends on customer taste, prevailing norms in fashion product/style, henceforth used interchangeably, and a customer's perception of utility or fashionability, yet fashion e-retail relies on algorithmically generated search and recommendation systems that process structured data and images to best match customer preference. Retailers study tastes solely as a function of what sold vs what did not, and take it to represent customer preference. Such explicit modeling, however, belies the underlying user preference, which is a complicated interplay of preference and commercials such as brand, price point, promotions, other sale events, and competitor push/marketing. It is hard to infer a notion of utility or even customer preference by looking at sales data. In search and recommendation systems for fashion e-retail, customer preference is implicitly derived by user-user similarity or item-item similarity. In this work, we aim to derive a metric that separates the buying preferences of users from the commercials of the merchandise (price, promotions, etc). We extend our earlier work on explicit signals to gauge sellability or preference [5] with implicit signals from user behaviour.

Kroger and Nuro executives said delivering groceries without drivers--while still years away--would make such services cheaper and easier to introduce in less densely populated parts of the country. Nearly a third of 4,504 adults surveyed by Forrester Analytics earlier this year said they didn't do more grocery shopping online because of costs including delivery charges. "We are not trying to be a dollar cheaper than regular delivery. We are trying to be an order of magnitude cheaper," said Dave Ferguson, who helped lead Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL 0.21% self-driving vehicle arm before co-founding Mountain View, Calif.-based Nuro in 2016. The Nuro partnership is the third deal Kroger has made in the past two months that aims to aid in how it sells to customers as competitors Amazon.com

Kroger, one of the country's largest grocery retailers, looks to bring its grocery delivery service into the future with plans to utilize autonomous vehicles to send goods to customers, the company announced Thursday. The partnership between the Ohio-based grocery chain and driverless car company Nuro means that customers can place same-day delivery orders through Kroger's ClickList ordering system and Nuro's fleet of self-driving vehicles will deliver those orders. Kroger, with 2,800 stores across the U.S, hopes that with the help of Nuro's technology it will "change the status quo of grocery delivery through convenience at a low price." It is the first time the tech company's hardware and software are being utilized, the company said. The rollout is slated for fall.

SEATTLE, WA - JANUARY 22: Shoppers enter and check out with purchases at the Amazon Go in Seattle, Washington. After more than a year in beta Amazon opened the cashier-less store to the public. Microsoft is working on autonomous-checkout technologies that could help retailers compete with Amazon's cashier-less stores. Sources told Reuters that, in tests, Microsoft is attaching cameras to shopping carts in order to track purchases as customers walk stores. Amazon Go's system requires that hundreds of cameras be installed in store ceilings.

Bossa Nova's shelf-scanning robot contains the same kind of sensors as a self-driving car. It's an unsettling time to be a major bricks-and-mortar retailer in the US. Retail corporate defaults hit an all-time high in the first quarter of this year as shoppers continue to abandon their local malls and embrace e-commerce. There's no denying that it's simpler to search for a product on Amazon than it is to march up and down aisles at the grocery store. But California-based robotics firm Bossa Nova is hoping to breathe new life into the bricks-and-mortar experience with the help of its shelf-scanning robot.

Kroger's efforts to play catch-up with Amazon in grocery delivery have taken it to the fringes of the "last mile" and a new partnership with an autonomous-driving startup that was hatched by guys who were involved in getting Google's driverless-car operation off the ground. It's the latest indication that the commercial logistics business is likely to have much more to do with shaping the early days of self-driven automotive transportation than the consumer side is. The Cincinnati-based supermarket chain, largest in the United States, said that it will begin piloting an "on-road, fully autonomous delivery experience" with Nuro, maker of the world's first unmanned road vehicle, in a city that the retailer hasn't yet announced, beginning this fall. The partnership will allow customers to place same-day delivery orders through Kroger's ClickList digital ordering system and Nuro's app. During the test, orders will be delivered by Nuro's fleet of autonomous vehicles, with human safety drivers to start out.

One of the most pressing concerns that keeps retail professionals up at night is how to combat fraud. Retailers could lose upwards of $71 billion from fraudulent online transactions over the next few years, yet some executives feel that publicly acknowledging a fraud issue would harm their brand. One of the most significant fraud concerns merchants face today are false positives -- i.e., transactions attempted by legitimate customers that are tagged as suspicious by fraud prevention systems, ultimately leaving money on the table. Because their effect is so difficult to accurately measure, false positives are often ignored, and their cost greatly underestimated. However, a majority of retailers say that fraudulent transactions that aren't detected cost more than a legitimate transaction that's inaccurately declined, despite some evidence that the opposite is true. What's more, relatively few companies track false positives.

Nuro's first project since emerging from stealth mode in January will be a grocery delivery pilot using its robotic vehicles with Kroger. Nuro, a Silicon Valley startup created by two Google Self-Driving Car Project veterans, has arranged a big debut for its little autonomous vehicles with plans for an on-demand grocery delivery pilot program with supermarket giant Kroger. Nuro emerged from stealth mode early this year with a $92 million fundraising announcement, and the project is the first for its miniature robot van that looks like a toaster on wheels. Kroger and Nuro said in a statement on Thursday that the pilot program begins late this year in a city to be named later. For it's a "pure partnership play," with no investment by Kroger, Kristal Howard, a spokeswoman for the Cincinnati-based grocery company, said.

Kroger plans to test driverless grocery delivery. As long as there have been grocery stores, there have been grocery delivery services. Now, Kroger is testing whether customers want their groceries delivered by no one. Kroger announced Thursday that it is teaming up with Nuro, a robotics company, to try out a driverless delivery service. Under the project, consumers would place grocery orders on Kroger's ClickList ordering system.

Today, Kroger announced it is partnering with self-driving vehicle startup Nuro in order to deliver groceries directly to customers' homes, according to Reuters. It's not clear where the test program will take place. Nuro is still obtaining regulatory approval for the project to take place. Nuro's vehicles differ from most other automated cars and trucks on the road because they are designed to operate without a person in them. These small vehicles are solely intended to deliver goods.