As competition heats up in e-commerce and retail, startups are leveraging AI to personalize the product discovery process for buyers and retailers alike. The e-commerce and retail landscapes are becoming increasingly competitive -- especially as Amazon has asserted its dominance, claiming almost 40% of e-commerce sales in the US over the 2017 holiday season. Faced with increasing pressure from dominant players, many smaller retail and e-commerce companies are seeking strategies to differentiate themselves and attract consumers. In response, startups have emerged to help retailers and e-commerce players streamline operations and personalize customer service, often through the use of AI-powered technology. We look at the technological advancements that are reshaping various aspects of e-commerce ranging from supply chain to customer experience and last mile delivery.

Let's face it, data analysis can be a costly and time-consuming affair and can sometimes take weeks or months of scouring through troves and troves of data from a number of channels, like sales, surveys, customer reviews and social media, to even interpret how consumers might be responding to a certain brand or product. Then, of course, there's always the chance that human error or bias could lead to the wrong interpretation or understanding of the data as well. But what if there was a faster, cheaper, quicker and more efficient way to crunch all that data to find out exactly how consumers think or feel about a brand? That's exactly what Revuze, an Israeli-based startup, is aiming to do by using an AI powered by neural networks and machine learning to cut the human element and timely and costly data crunching out of brand and product management by offering up almost-immediate insight into how a brand's products and services are being experienced by the consumer. "Industries … have previously relied on manually intensive solutions, such as analytics, social listening and monitoring," according to Revuze.