Artificial intelligence in retail

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a common occurrence now — whether you’ve noticed it or not. If you’ve been on the internet recently and have seen an advert which is tailored to your browsing habits, or have been sent market material in relation to your purchases, then you have witnessed AI doing its job and transforming the way customers shop.

According to a report by Accenture, AI has the potential to increase profitability in the labour-intense retail industry by almost 60% — it will enable employees to be more productive by augmenting the workforce and automating long processes.

A number large of retailers are already noticing how AI can revolutionise their workforce and drive profits to new heights.
The North Face have recently teamed up with the AI giant IBM Watson and created a jacket-finding chatbot which can recommend the perfect item of clothing in well under a minute. This chatbot asks the consumer questions such as, “Where and when will you be going”, to determine which jacket will would be of best fit and recommends items accordingly. This simple use of AI will cut out the need to ask members of staff multiple questions as customers would be able to enter the store fully aware of the item they need.
Despite there being many obvious benefits, some retailers are still reluctant to reach into the ever-expanding world of AI as they are unsure of how to utilise it correctly — let alone keep up with the speed at which it is growing.
If this description sounds familiar, don’t worry, below are three ways in which retailers can create a revolutionary retail experience with the help of AI.

Know your customer

AI can massively assist a company’s understanding of their customers by determining what products they are looking for. This information would give retailers confidence that they are stocking the correct products and targeting said products to the correct groups.

This use of artificial intelligence is quite common for generating information on customer spending habits, but there are countless other ways it can be used to achieve the same results. AI has the potential to generate insight on customer habits throughout the shopping process, even during their time in the store! What time did they enter? How long after did they leave? Which products did they look at but not buy? Data such as this will let retailers know the ideal time to interact with a customer in order to persuade them into a purchase. The opportunities are endless.

Lead your customers to what they want

Over the course of a year or two there have been many companies who have started using AI to increase profits. Artificial intelligence can help lead customers to the products they want, whilst also pointing them towards things that they do want, but didn’t know they wanted. The North Face chatbot, as mentioned earlier, is a great example of AI leading a customer to a product they don’t specifically know they wanted.

Large online retail brands, with a wide range of varied products, will benefit from this the most. If a customer visits their site and is met with an endless wall of products, they are likely to take their custom elsewhere. This means that companies that use AI to lead their customers in the right direction have a strong advantage over their competitors.

It’s common knowledge that the adverts found on search engines and websites are moulded to a user’s internet habits and that many online retailers use selected data to adapt what some customers see on their website. Why then, aren’t large retailers customising their entire website to boost customer experience? It is the next obvious move up this particular AI ladder.

One of the main reasons that consumers use online shopping over in-store shopping is due to its ease. Why trek all the way to a store when an item can be delivered to your doorstep the next day? Well, AI could soon flip this around and question instead why anyone would choose to miss out on an exceptional in-store experience in favour of a dull delivery with no user interaction.

Coop Italia have begun paving the way to creating a futuristic AI shopping experience that would certainly draw customers back if their concept became more readily available. Their ‘Supermarket of the future’ opened its doors in December 2016 and offered a unique atmosphere which merged physical and digital to provide useful product information to customers and improve store navigation. By creating a positive memorable experience, Coop Italia have given customers a reason to return to the store and make further purchases there.

So many of us are now attached to our mobile phones whilst we’re walking around a shop, whether that’s to research recipes or view product information — the next logical step would be to have this information on the shop floor itself using bots or touch screens.

The buzz around AI at the moment then is not unwarranted. Progression in AI has already provided multiple retailers with increased profits and higher customer satisfaction levels.

It really is time for the retail industry to start reaching for the future — by combining AI and a human workforce, retailers can truly transform the high street experience for the better.

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