AI is Proving Crucial for Retail Brand SuccessAI is Proving Crucial for Retail Brand Success

Amazon has leveraged its artificial intelligence expertise to be named the most valuable retail brand, according to the BrandZ Top 75 Most Valuable Global Retail Brands Ranking.

The report said that e-commerce mainstay Amazon accounted for 23 percent of the total brand value of companies in the top 75 with a reported value of $315.5 billion. WPP and Kantar’s rankings found that its advances in artificial intelligence technology partly motivated the company's success.

The Brandz report points to a recent Amazon patent for technology that will allow shoppers to see how clothes will look on them by using photos from their social media accounts, as well as its slew of smart devices, such as the Alexa, as key motivators for its sustained success.

"What the e-commerce players have capitalized on so successfully is the importance of the human touch to online retail," says Graham Staplehurst, global strategy director, BrandZ, Kantar. "Access to unprecedented computing power and near limitless data as well as artificial intelligence and visual and voice technology interfaces gives retailers and brands the ability to absorb and process vast amounts of information but in a way that puts the shopping experience firmly back in the human domain."

Companies also ranked in the Top 5 of the report include Alibaba and JD. On the heels of the study, Brandz recently ranked Alibaba as the most valuable brand in China in its report on Chinese brands.