Inside Amazon’s AI-Powered eCommerce Growth

The importance of data and AI in e-commerce and retail, particularly in creating an authoritative catalog and optimizing inventory management for a unified buying experience.

• AI is winning against traditional algorithms in e-commerce and retail
• Data is crucial in fueling AI algorithms
• Amazon's success in creating an authoritative catalog through product type definitions
• The need for a unified buying experience through omnichannel retail and optimized inventory management
• AI can play a huge role in marketing discovery, transactional experience, and inventory management

Amazon started as a bookseller, which allowed them to build a large catalog. However, as they expanded into non-media businesses, they had to create a more generalized schema for their catalog. They created product type definitions for each new product type, but this led to maintenance problems and inconsistencies among the hundreds of ptds. For example, product descriptions for consumer electronics lacked technical specs, which were not necessary for books or videos. This illustrates the importance of creating an authoritative catalog through data and AI, as well as optimizing inventory management for a unified buying experience.

Jeff Wilke is chairman and co-founder of Re-Build Manufacturing, a private company helping to bolster America’s industrial competitiveness. Before taking on this role, Wilke spent more than 21 years at Amazon, most recently as CEO of Worldwide Consumer, where he grew the business from $1 billion to a mind-boggling $386 billion a year. He spent his first seven years at Amazon building global operations. Wilke brings a wealth of knowledge across areas including supply chain, retail, and operations. Wilke speaks with Scale CEO Alexandr Wang to discuss his journey at Amazon and covers how focusing on data and building models can help power eCommerce marketplaces. Learn how Wilke applied AI across the entire eCommerce stack and created an authoritative and comprehensive product catalog with more than 12 million listings. He will also share his predictions about the future of AI and sustainability. Wilke is an active philanthropist and mentor of startup founders who identify as female and/or People of Color. He is Vice Chairman of Code.org and Chairman of the U.S. Government’s Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness.