Digital First, Physical Second: Wayfair’s Fiona Tan

With a background in building enterprise platforms for organizations, including Oracle and Walmart, Wayfair CTO Fiona Tan oversees all of the technology initiatives for the Boston-based e-commerce company. As the home furnishings retailer begins to open brick-and-mortar stores, it’s taking lessons learned from the digital space to inform how it markets its home products to customers in physical locations.

On this episode, Fiona joins Sam and Shervin to discuss how artificial intelligence fuels nearly everything the retailer does, from ad purchasing to product pricing, and where human decision makers fit in. She also describes how AI enables Wayfair’s marketing automation technology, as well as some innovative new programs underway to help customers experience the company’s products virtually. Read the episode transcript here.

Read the 2022 MIT Sloan Management Review-BCG Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy report here: sloanreview.mit.edu/ai2022.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

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Guest bio:

Fiona Tan is the chief technology officer at Wayfair, where she oversees a global innovation team responsible for creating market-leading experiences through the home furnishings retailer’s world-class e-commerce platform. Before joining Wayfair, Tan served as senior vice president of U.S. technology at Walmart, where she was responsible for innovation and engineering execution spanning its site, mobile app, and all associate and merchant-facing technology across its e-commerce business and retail stores in the United States.

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