Artificial intelligence or AI’s impact on the retail industries has improved the shopping experience.
Artificial Intelligence or AI has created a visual impact on almost all industrial sectors, and retail industry is no exception. Be it automated marketing or smart fulfilment or predictive analysis, AI is revolutionising the retail industry by helping the retailers to grow their businesses, at a fast pace. The retail industry is already going through the artificial intelligence experience, thanks to the software solutions and the robotics. In the year 2018, the retailers had executed AI/ML technology in some way or the other. The retailers need to evolve, by keeping “Customer Centricity” as the core of the transformation, to develop unique and innovative solutions, for creating frictionless experiences for the wide range of customers.
According to the retail executives survey by Capgemini at the AI in Retail Conference, it has been witnessed that AI technology in retail has saved up to $340 billion each year for the industry by 2020. As per reports, Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Narrow Intelligence start-ups raised $1.8 billion in 374 deals, between 2013-2015. Amazon is the one to take the credit of these impressive numbers, as they are the ones to change the business leaders’ minds about Artificial intelligence in the retail market. For instance, SPD Group has a well-developed system for product suggestions, based on tracking a customer’s location and the actions in a store, thanks to the AI technology. This project started with an aim to improve the CRM in a supermarket.
As technology is evolving on a daily basis, Artificial Intelligence or AI and ML technology is no longer futuristic in its approach. They have become an integral part of our lives. Artificial Intelligence models can predict demands of unseen products, to artificially synthesize winning product designs, personalize interactions with customers, so on and so forth. For instance, in Shopify, the business leaders primarily focus on the power of AI to enhance their business in future. They use ML in their fulfilment network to predict the closest fulfilment centres and optimal inventory qualities per location to ensure fast, low-cost deliveries of their merchant products. Their business chat app, Shopify Inbox, is built on a natural language processing foundation, that enables merchants to convert conversations into sales.
How has AI changed the Retail Industry?
• Data analytics, along with the AI/ML technologies, have helped the organizations to assimilate huge amounts of data, apply intelligence and generate insights, to help the internal associates to create more value for their customers.
• Technologies namely, Block chain, IoT, along with Artificial Intelligence or AI, enables the organizations to bring more transparency to their customers, increase sustainability, reduce carbon footprint, so on and so forth.
• Technologies namely Robotics, Haptics, AR/VR along with Artificial Intelligence or AI, enables to create a stronger visualization environment for the customers and build an alluring sensory enabled e-commerce environment, and many more, to omit the lines between physical stores and digital.
• Now the stores can become cash-free, thank to the Artificial intelligence or AI technology. For instance, Amazon AI has already introduced checkout-free stores. The Amazon Go and Just Walk Out Shopping technology reacts to when someone takes something from the shelf pr put it back. When one walks out of the store, the Amazon account will take the money from the buyer.