One of the industries dominated by AI in the recent times has been the Fashion Industry. The increase focus on advanced technology to further the customer experience as well as to increase the revenue by focusing on personalization through the consumer data acquired using AI. This helps the industry to suggest clothing pattern on the basis on consumer needs. This has also eased the process of understanding consumer needs by shifting the tasks of data collection, calculation and analysis to automation. Major tasks such as inventory management have also become smooth due to the enhanced use of technology which makes the process more structured and simpler to analyse and make decisions.
The investment in AI globally in the fashion industry is said to be USD 161.9 million in 2018 which is expected to grow exponentially at a rate of more than 40.8 percent in the period of 2019-2026. The industry has come to the realization that, in this highly uncertain world where trends and styles evolve continuously, its identification becomes potent in serving consumers and in analyzing buying behavior. Therefore the adoption of AI helps in bringing a boost to the growth of fashion retail. Social media also has a large role to play in the fashion industry and party it is because of social media that the importance of AI was felt greatly.
The greater inclusion of social media in the industry has lead to segmentation of consumers which makes it easier to customise offers leading to better customer satisfaction. Until now, the North American region has contributed significantly to the growing adoption of social media in terms of market share followed by Asia-Pacific that is said to have the highest growth rate from 2019 to 2026. The indulgence of social media has also lead to expansion of local enterprises and government initiatives that support the growing need for AI technology. It has also facilitated an environment where small and local businesses can thrive through better contact with consumers and also by acquiring rich consumer information that helps them to organize their business accordingly, moving faster into achieving profit.
The obvious impacts due to AI have lead to huge investments that came into the field of AI especially in the past few years. The investments came primarily from the major tech giants such as Microsoft (US), IBM (US), Google (US), AWS (US), SAP (Germany), Facebook (US), Adobe (US), Oracle (US), Catchoom (Spain), Huawei (China), Vue.ai (US), Heuritech (France), Wide eyes (Spain) and FINDMINE (US). These companies saw an opportunity in the increasing population, their preferences and the growth of disposable income in the households which made them optimistic about the growth prospects of AI to be lucrative in the fashion market.
Wide range of research and development has also catered to understand the study, prevalence, functioning and benefits of AI where they have made an attempt to define market sizes of different segments and countries, thereby determining their value in the coming years. Such studies also help us to understand the significant challenges that one faces with respect to such technologies which will help the industry to find relevant solutions at an early stage. The focus on developing state of art systems, software tools, platforms and services to facilitate the functioning of AI smoothly has been given importance. Upon the setting up of right infrastructure will help in skill building in the form of training and consulting which will further help in system integration.
The benefits of AI is said to be manifold, some of which are product recommendation, product search and discovery, supply chain management, demand forecasting, creative designing, trend forecasting, customer relationship management, virtual assistance, fraud detection, price optimization and such. This can cater to all types of product in the fashion industry, be it footwear, apparel, jewelry or beauty and cosmetics.
One of the most important functions AI will perform is to transfer the mundane tasks to automation; this would in turn help people working in the industry to focus on more important tasks. It is also worth noting that the among of time one can save and errors one can do away with would enhance the players in the industry to up their game a notch higher which is all the more relevant in trying times like the one that we are facing today.
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