In today’s competitive retail market, providing real-time product recommendations and services has become a must-do for online retailers, especially during the busy holiday season. Luckily, the secret ingredient is one they already have: connected data.
The trick is knowing how to leverage this data. For example, in the case of providing online product recommendations, it often requires drawing insights from connections between a customer’s past purchases and the product or promotion that makes the most sense based on their interests – via their social network footprint and previous buying patterns.
Fortunately, graph databases offer an invaluable framework for making sense of such super-connected data. In this slideshow, Neo Technology offers a look at how three major brands — Walmart, eBay and adidas Group — are leveraging graph databases to power commerce this holiday season and beyond.
Super Charging E-Commerce with Graph Databases
Click through for real-world examples detailing how graph databases are being used to super-charge e-commerce marketing, as identified by Neo Technology.
Walmart
Walmart is a family-owned business that in a little over 50 years has become the world’s largest public corporation. With more than $460 billion in sales and 2.2 million associates employed worldwide, Walmart serves more than 245 million customers weekly at its 11,000 stores in 27 countries and on its e-commerce websites in 10 countries.
Walmart
Walmart is using a graph database to help make sense of its online shoppers’ behavior in order to optimize and cross-sell major product lines in core markets. Its simple and real-time recommendation system supports low-latency queries. The result is being able to analyze the behavior and preferences of online buyers with enough speed and in enough depth to make real-time, personalized recommendations to help drive sales.
eBay
Founded in 1995 in San Jose, Calif., eBay connects millions of buyers and sellers globally in the world’s largest online marketplace. The eBay Now service coordinates deliveries between stores, couriers and shoppers on a 24/7 schedule. Dispatching from point-of-sale, the service handles logistics for pickup and delivery based on customer preference – usually within two hours or within a specified one-hour window scheduled by the customer.
eBay
The secret behind this sophisticated, real-time courier/package routing is a graph database, which helps eBay run the fast queries used to select the best courier service for each request. The results include boosted customer service, as well as productivity for retail and delivery partners. Everyone wins – customers now have delivery options, couriers don’t wait and retail stores are able to provide additional service for their online customers.
adidas Group
The adidas Group is a global leader in the sporting goods industry and one of the world’s most valuable brands. With annual sales of €14.5 billion, the adidas Group offers a broad portfolio of footwear, apparel and hardware around the core brands of adidas, Reebok and TaylorMade. Headquartered in Germany, the Group employs more than 53,000 people across the globe.
adidas Group
The adidas Group leverages graph technology to help it provide the most compelling and relevant content to its consumers, as well as offering enhanced features such as product recommendations. Whether it’s to help direct a fan to a great piece of Real Madrid football merchandise or tailor content based on a consumer’s favorite basketball team, graph database technology is enabling adidas to take personalization to the next level through product recommendations and more.
