Mondadori Store, Italy’s most extensive network of bookshops, presents a new tool to serve customers: MyStore, a digital assistant that can suggest content and provide customised advice thanks to the use of sophisticated analytics.

MyStore is in the form of a totem with an interactive multi-touch screen with which customers can interact rapidly and intuitively in order to receive highly personalised suggestions for purchases and gifts. MyStore uses GetInTouch software, an interactive cognitive content presenter developed by Mauden, one of the most engaged information technology companies involved in digital innovation. This solution exploits the augmented intelligence of the IBM Watson, a cognitive system able to elaborate an enormous quantity of data.

“With MyStore we are the first Italian retailer to introduce a service based on this kind of technology, a solution that will offer our customers a new way of exploring the Mondadori Store catalogue inside the stores,” declaredFrancesco Riganti, marketing director of Mondadori Retail. “The search function has been designed to be as personalised as possible and is based on the preferences of customers, also as reflected on social media, which makes possible new and more sophisticated profiling that can learn continuously learn from the history of interactions. This is why we have decided to partner with two companies like Mauden and IBM that, in recent years, have developed the most important cognitive solutions.”

The three functions on MyStore are MyBook, MyGift and MyFinder.

MyBook helps customers to find the right book thanks to a cognitive analysis based on the customers’ profile. By accessing from your Facebook account, the totem elaborates your preferences through a multichoice function based on books, music and films to identify the users’ tastes. The selection will then be combined with the Mondadori Store lists and data not protected by privacy on Facebook, such as pages followed, date of birth, friends lists, etc. In this way the system generates a “Chosen for you” list, with suggested titles from MyStore.
Users can also add books seen to a list of favourites, in the “Discover products” section, any time they access MyStore.

MyGift makes it possible to find the best book to give as a gift. Also in this case it is possible to profile the recipient by selecting titles and, consequently, also the type of books preferred which, together with the Mondadori Store lists, create a new “MyGift” list with the ideal books to select to give as a gift.

MyFinder enables customers to find products on sale in stores such as books, CDs and DVDs, with information about prices, pictures of the products and the area of the store where they can be found. This function enables customers to search for products by name and fro books a funtion will also be included to search using the ISBN.

The MyStore service, available for the first time in Italy, is active in the Mondadori Megastores in Piazza Duomo and via Marghera in Milan, and at the Mondadori Bookstore in Via Appia Nuova in Rome.