"AI Reads Customer Preferences"... Shinsegae Department Store's Paper Accepted at World's Top AI Conference

One-Year Joint Research with Seoul National University: Development of a Hyper-Personalized Model Based on 200 Million Shopping Records
AI Sales Agent Launch Planned for Next Year; Average Transaction Value Expected to Rise by Up to 46%

Shinsegae Department Store announced on July 23 that the AI-based hyper-personalized customer analysis technology it jointly developed with Seoul National University has been accepted as a paper at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), the world’s most prestigious AI conference. This is the first time that an academic-industry collaboration by a domestic department store has been selected for ICML.

This research is the result of an academic-industry cooperation project that Shinsegae Department Store conducted for about a year following the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Graduate School of Data Science at Seoul National University in January of last year. Aiming to develop next-generation retail technology using AI and big data, the two parties built 'AI Ready Data'—a processed data structure designed for AI understanding and learning—by refining approximately 200 million shopping data records accumulated both online and offline.

AI Ready Data is a data structure that enables integrated analysis of diverse information, including not only purchase histories but also visit patterns, preferred brands, and more. Based on this, the system was designed to precisely analyze each customer’s preferences and consumer tendencies, thereby enabling personalized product and service recommendations.

Shinsegae Department Store plans to leverage this technology to move beyond recommendations based on age, gender, or VIP tiers, aiming to deliver hyper-personalized services that reflect each customer’s purchasing patterns and lifestyle. The strategy is to develop the AI-based retail platform further—not only to recommend products, but also to offer tailored travel, cultural, and lifestyle content for each individual customer.

Early next year, Shinsegae will also introduce an 'AI Sales Agent' to be utilized on the sales floor. This system will use AI to analyze customer characteristics, purchasing patterns, product management, and promotion strategies in real time, with the aim of supporting marketing and sales decision-making.

In pre-simulations conducted by Shinsegae Department Store based on their research results, it was found that applying AI-based personalized recommendation technology could increase the average transaction value by up to 46%.

Lee Sunghwan, Executive Vice President of Sales Strategy at Shinsegae Department Store, stated, "We plan to apply the research results to actual retail settings in order to enhance the customer experience and advance data-driven decision-making."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.