One week after Albertson’s President and CEO Vivek Sankaran said that he could see online grocery reaching 20% of sales, it was announced this week that Albertsons and Google have partnered to bring more efficiency to customers both online and in-store. The multiyear pact includes efforts to integrate Google Search and Maps to help shoppers locate products, streamline the checkout process with Google Pay, and leverage artificial intelligence technologies like Vision AI, Recommendations AI and Business Messages to build a predictive grocery engine.
The plans for artificial intelligence include features like conversational commerce and predictive grocery list building. According to Albertsons, Business Messages, a conversational messaging solution, has already been in use to help people get up-to-date information about Covid-19 vaccines through Google Search, Google Maps and Albertsons’ own channels.
An article in Supermarket News noted that a core goal of the partnership is to make online grocery services easier to use. And on Tuesday, the companies announced new pickup and delivery actions that share online information like delivery providers, pickup and delivery time windows, fees and order minimums from Albertsons stores directly on their business profiles in mobile search.