Profitmind Unveils Product Matching Tool Awase

In Pittsburgh, USA, agentic AI retail decision intelligence platform Profitmind has rolled out Awase, a competitive intelligence model which allows retailers to identify the same product across competing online catalogs, without the need for a shared product code.

Profitmind says competitive analysis requires companies to know whether competitors sell exactly the same products, or if not what is the closest comparison. Existing methods such as manual competitive shopping, keyword rules and product identifiers do not scale well across large, frequently changing assortments, especially given differing descriptions and classifications often used for the same product.

Awase was built from analysis of more than 200 million product listings over the past five years, across 'every retail segment and product type.' The tool analyzes product photography and descriptions together, in fashion and other categories, and in tests over the past six months has produced 61% fewer first-attempt errors than its nearest competitor, according to the firm.

'Retailers spend a significant amount of their time trying to understand how they compare to their key competitors,' says CEO and co-founder Dr. Mark Chrystal (pictured). 'Merchants often need competitive insights across categories where product identifiers may be missing, inconsistent, or unreliable. Profitmind Awase evaluates the product itself, comparing each product at the detail level of an experienced merchant, so retailers can automate competitive analysis across most of their catalog.'

Jeff Rix, Head of AI at Profitmind, gives further detail into the challenges involved. 'The hardest matches hinge on subtle attributes that models trained purely on web data miss. Two styles can look almost identical while differing in fabrication, pack size, model year, or another key attribute that changes the match. Merchants know which details matter. We used that judgment to teach Profitmind Awase how to make those distinctions consistently across large assortments.'

Profitmind is a decision intelligence platform built by retail operators for retail operators, and supports merchandising decisions for retailers ranging from $20 million to $100 billion in revenue across merchandise categories on three continents.

Web site: www.profitmind.com .