IBM Launches Shopping Trends Analysis App

IBM has released a new application today called Watson Trend, the app taps into the supercomputer and analyzes trends to let you know which gifts and toys are trending and therefore are most popular this holiday season.

The app also predicts the hottest products before they sell out.

The data is pulled from “tens of millions of conversations around purchase intent, purchase experience, and post-purchase emotion”, from more than 10,000 Web sites like social media, top 30 blogs, ratings and reviews, and ecommerce sites.

Using Watson’s understanding of natural language and machine learning technologies, the app uncovers consumer preferences to pinpoint patterns and trends to reveal why people are choosing certain products or brands. “We have aspirations for marketers to use the app, but also consumer products companies that need foresight on trends to innovate”, he says, calling the first version a gift-giving guide. Each group is given a relative daily Trend Score, ranging from 0 to 100, based on the impact (size of the conversation) and the momentum (the rate of growth of the conversation). Over the week running to Thanksgiving, mobile traffic is expected to rise by nearly 57%, which is a 17% increase over 2014.

By sharing these capabilities through its Watson Developer Cloud, entrepreneurs, startups and established businesses can develop cognitive powered products and services to revolutionize several industries and disciplines including retail and customer service. By doing so, Watson is able to determine the general reaction to any product, as well as whether or not that reaction is trending upward or downward.