Albertsons Companies and Google announced a multi-year agreement in which they join forces, creating a nexus of retail savvy and trendsetting technology on a massive, omnichannel scale.
The grocery retailer said they have been collaborating behind the scenes with Google for the past year and are rolling out several enhancements to make the shopping experience easier for consumers.
“Albertsons Cos. continues to transform into a modern, future-ready retailer, and we are leading the industry by providing the easiest and most exciting shopping experience for our customers,” said Chris Rupp, Albertsons’ executive vice president and chief customer and digital officer. “By marrying Google’s technology expertise with our commitment to customer-centric innovation, we are providing our customers with a superior shopping experience, regardless of how they choose to shop with us.”
Albertsons has collaborated with numerous Google teams, spanning a wide range of technologies and services aimed at streamlining the customer experience; for example, integrating with Google Search and Maps to help shoppers more easily find what they need, making shopping easier with Google Pay, and infusing Google Cloud AI technologies, such as Vision AI, Recommendations AI and Business Messages, into operations to create the world’s most predictive grocery engine.
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Innovations planned under this partnership include:
- Comprehensive maps with dynamic hyper-local features.
- AI-driven conversational commerce
- Predictive shopping list creation
Finally, Albertsons and Google make it even easier for customers to get groceries for pickup and delivery by providing useful online ordering information from many Albertsons stores directly within mobile search. This functionality will be coming to Google Maps later this year.
Google’s partnership with Albertsons will build on projects already implemented to improve the customer experience. For example, earlier this month, Albertsons announced its use of Business Messages to help people get up-to-date information about COVID-19 vaccines at Albertsons pharmacies.
“Albertsons Companies is leading the way in bringing innovative technologies to the digital and physical grocery aisle,” says Carrie Tharp, VP of Retail and Consumer, Google Cloud. “We are proud to partner with Albertsons Companies to streamline processes and power innovative shopping experiences for customers. The unique strategic and technical collaboration at the heart of the Google and Albertsons partnership lays the foundation for sustained transformation post-pandemic and momentum that will be evident to customers in both the short and long term.”