How AI Empowers, Not Replaces, Merchants
In our final conversation, John Wang, former Head of Merchandising at Dockers, and I discussed a topic that’s on everyone’s mind: AI.
As AI continues to reshape our industry, many merchandising leaders are asking the same question:
Will AI replace merchants?
John offered a perspective that I believe every merchandising leader should consider.
"People stop making decisions on their own because they’re relying on something else to give them the answer."
AI has enormous potential to improve merchandising. Its greatest contribution lies in helping merchants overcome many of the barriers we discussed in our previous article — getting the data, using the data, and trusting the data — so they can spend more time applying the expertise that makes them successful.
Three opportunities stood out during our conversation.
1. Make information usable
AI can dramatically reduce the time merchants spend preparing information.
Instead of manually consolidating reports, searching across multiple systems, or relying on institutional knowledge to answer simple questions, merchants can ask questions conversationally and receive accurate, contextual answers. AI can consolidate reports, connect product information, summarize findings, compare visual and textual attributes, and organize information in seconds.
The result is more time spent analyzing the business and less time preparing for analysis.
2. Surface what merchants don’t know
No merchant — regardless of experience — can remember every product, every market insight, or every lesson learned over the course of a career.
AI becomes another set of eyes and ears. It can identify inconsistencies in product information, highlight details that may have been overlooked, connect historical context, recognize duplicate work, and help organizations avoid repeating mistakes from previous seasons.
Institutional knowledge becomes more accessible, allowing every merchant to benefit from years of accumulated experience while making more informed decisions.
3. Preserve the art of merchandising
AI can analyze historical data, recognize patterns, and model potential outcomes.
What it can’t do is predict the future.
It can’t fully understand why one product becomes an icon while another ends up on the discount rack.
Great merchants use every tool available to improve their chances of making the right decision. Consumer insights, commercial performance, market trends, competitive intelligence, and AI all contribute to the picture.
The final decision still belongs to the merchant.
It requires judgment, intuition, creativity, and a deep understanding of the brand and the consumer.
That’s the art of merchandising.
If every brand delegates merchandising decisions to AI, the industry moves toward the same answers. Assortments become safer, brands become more alike, and the uniqueness consumers connect with gradually disappears.
Merchants have always created that differentiation. AI expands their ability to gather information, uncover insights, and model scenarios. Experience, intuition, commercial judgment, and creativity determine what happens next.
Giving merchants better information, richer context, and more time to think may be one of the greatest opportunities AI brings to the industry.
How do we use AI to strengthen human judgment while preserving the creativity and intuition that make great merchandising possible?
This is the final part of our three-part merchandising series with John Wang. Read Part 1: What Makes a Great Merchant? and Part 2: The Three Biggest Barriers Facing Merchandising Teams Today.