Think smaller merchants don’t have the technology to compete with giants such as Amazon.com in the digital age? Then look at the new, advanced but usable e-commerce and customer-experience platforms. Together with democratized social selling channels, they enable all companies to deliver the Amazon experience to customers.

For example, there is Adobe Inc., which has acquired Magento Inc.’s e-commerce platform and Marketo Inc.’s software platform. With these additions, the Adobe Experience Cloud now offers businesses of all sizes advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence and customer-experience testing and tuning.

There was concern among Magento users that Adobe, with its enterprise focus, would cannibalize the features for small-to-medium businesses, according to Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. On the contrary, it’s “allowing these smaller merchants to sort of level the playing field and have access to the power of a branded … storefront that allows a smaller business to get some differentiation; whereas before, they didn’t have that,” Martin said.

Martin and co-host Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) spoke during the Imagine event in Las Vegas. They discussed Adobe’s expansion through acquisitions and the democratization of advanced e-commerce and CX tech (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Real-time data keeps CX piping hot

The digitally enabled merchant can bring commerce to the point of customer engagement rather then drive customers to commerce, Frick pointed out. Platforms like Adobe’s give them a 360 view of customers and allow them to customize and test many different engagement routes.

“It used to be just A/B [testing]; now it’s A/B times literally millions and millions of customized experiences delivered to the client,” he said.

The moment is finally arriving when hyper-relevant advertising can be designed based on real-time data analysis. Advertising based on stale data has annoyed digital consumers for years. “I’ve been looking at tents. I bought a tent. I don’t want to see ads for tents anymore. It’s time to see an ad for a sleeping bag or a camp stove,” Frick quipped.

Access to this technology in tandem with new, non-competing selling channels could help smaller merchants take a bite out of Amazon’s market dominance, according to Frick. “These are really opening up the opportunities for these smaller retailers, midsize retailers, to compete in a really complicated and super hyper-competitive world,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Imagine 2019 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Imagine 2019 event. Neither Adobe Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Magento Inc.