Albertsons AI Assistants Drive Immediate 26% Basket Growth Among Early Adopters

Grocery retailer Albertsons Companies found that the customers who begin using its artificial intelligence-powered online shopping experience make larger purchases almost immediately, Jill Pavlovich, senior vice president of digital shopping experiences at Albertsons, told The Wall Street Journal in a report published Monday (Aug. 17).

Albertsons has seen the average order value of these customers increase 10% when they use the company’s conversational search and 26% when they use its more comprehensive assistants that find recipes and ingredients that match their dietary preferences, Pavlovich said in the report.

“When they’re using a more comprehensive experience, they’re adding even more [items to their basket] because they’re not forgetting items,” Pavlovich said, per the report.

Albertsons rolled out several AI experiences to help shoppers over the last 18 months, including Ask AI, Plan AI and Buy AI, but it’s now consolidating them into a single conversational assistant that can help shoppers locate products, discover related items and prepare shopping lists for events, Pavlovich said in the report.

The digital customer experience is one of four areas in which Albertsons is concentrating its investments in AI. The others are merchandising intelligence, empowering staff and optimizing the supply chain, Pavlovich said, per the report.

Albertsons Companies, whose company banners include Albertsons, Jewel Osco, Safeway and Vons, reported during a January earnings call that it was seeing early results of its deeper integration of data and AI.

At that time, Ask AI, an AI shopping assistant accessible via the search bar in the apps of all its banner stores, was delivering a 10% increase in basket size for the customers who were using it, Albertsons Companies CEO Susan Morris said during the call.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Global Digital Shopping Index: The AI-Powered Shopper Has Arrived” found that 47% of online shoppers enlisted the help of AI somewhere in their most recent purchase.

Online grocery marketplace and technology provider Instacart said in June that orders placed with its AI assistant are generally larger than typical orders. Instacart’s assistant can build a cart for a specified kind of meal, learn the customer’s favorite brands and find items that are on sale. The company said early results showed that consumers find the assistant useful and are using it to support their weekly shopping.

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