E-commerce is the fastest and most efficient retail channel when consumers know what it is that they want to buy.
Rather than having to search store shelves or go from shop to shop, they can simply type what they want into a search box and be taken to the exact product.
This is only possible because of the retailer’s understanding of user intent.
Most websites and search engines today use natural language processing to interpret the customer’s intent. In the same way that we, as humans, can infer much about one another from the things we say, natural language processing allows digital systems to understand more of our language beyond just grammar.
From the keywords used in search queries and the context of those search terms, the system can try to interpret what the intention of the customer is.