Solving Product Substitutions in Grocery E-Commerce Through Self-Supervised Machine Learning

Explore innovative solutions to the challenge of product substitutions in grocery e-commerce through a conference talk by Jawad Ahmed, Staff Applied Scientist at Loblaw Digital. Delve into the unique problems faced by Canada's largest grocery retailer, Loblaw Companies Ltd, as they navigate the complexities of online grocery shopping. Learn how the company tackles the issue of dynamic inventory and out-of-stock items to maintain customer satisfaction. Discover the evolution of their approach, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge self-supervised machine learning methods that leverage text descriptions and product images. Gain insights into how historical data on customer and employee substitute selections is utilized to create personalized, business-metric-driven product similarities. Understand the significance of this solution in improving the e-commerce grocery shopping experience and its potential impact on the industry's $2 billion annual online sales.