Sports-inspired footwear and apparel brand Puma has partnered with Google Cloud to deploy its data, analytics and AI (artificial intelligence) solutions, aiming to enhance the online shopping experience globally.
The strategic move will involve shifting parts of Puma’s e-commerce ecosystem to Google Cloud and establishing a global e-commerce data platform.
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The multi-year agreement will see the retailer integrating Google Cloud AI in all stages of its direct-to-consumer channels, offering more personalised customer experiences.
Vertex AI Search for retail will improve product discovery on Puma.com, providing tailored shopping recommendations based on current interests and trends.
Puma also plans to utilise Google Cloud’s generative AI and visual search tools to offer a generative AI shopping assistant and option to “Shop The Look” features, allowing virtual try-ons of sportswear using AI-generated content.
AI technology will also revamp Puma.com’s global loyalty programme, enhancing reward transactions and customising offers to individual and family preferences.
The collaboration has already yielded positive outcomes, with a 19% increase in average order value attributed to the use of Google Analytics and BigQuery for better customer insights and content tailoring.
Apigee and BigQuery have enabled Puma to access real-time inventory levels up to four times faster, facilitating product availability for customers.
Puma global e-commerce engineering director Pancho Ortuzar said: “By building a centralised customer data platform on Google Cloud, we get the highest quality technology when it comes to analytics, data governance and security, allowing us to radically improve how we work with partners in the interests of our customers.
“Common data standards and API [application programming interface] management through Apigee mean that no matter where our retail outlet operators are on their digitisation journeys, they can tap into our digital services and insights without having to alter their current IT systems.
“That, in turn, enables them to create even more localised experiences, supported by consistently world-class data security and operational intelligence, with minimal disruption to them or their customers.”
In January 2024, Puma partnered with software company Yottaa to enhance its e-commerce site performance worldwide.
