Intent is the New Search

Syed Arij:

In the coming years, particularly in the next year, I am seeing a couple of trends that I really wanted to talk about here. Individually and personally for me as a consumer, I'm seeing a lot of searches to intent. That is the paradigm shift that I'm seeing. And the other thing is more from a industry and a business standpoint where I'm seeing smaller retailers and medium sized retailers getting more more prominent on the map.

So I'm going to give an example for each of those. From a consumer standpoint, I no longer have to look for products. I have to express my intent. For instance, I just have to say that I am organizing a party in the next couple of days, and I have a budget consideration of $200 for roughly 20 people, and I am someone who does not like plastics. And that should be enough for the agents to sense the intent from me and curate the content for me and be able to apply the promotions and discounts that I am eligible for and eventually transacting on my behalf as well. So that's a big shift that is already happening. The other thing that I just spoke about is the smaller retailers, a mom and pop store, a fashion retailer that is in the corner of my neighborhood now has the power to surface up their products on the map to have the prominence much like an Amazon or a Walmart would in the past by investing in the right technology, by investing in the agents that have the ability to sense the intent from their end consumers and being able to curate the right products on behalf of those consumers and then able to transact on behalf of those consumers as well. So I think those are the two major shifts that I'm seeing and I'm very, very bullish about those changes as well.