AI Restoring Power to Brick and Mortar Retailers

Ever since the 20th century, store owners and sales executives have less and less influence on the functioning of the store, but AI can reverse this trend and empower retailers. 

FREMONT, CA: The retail landscape has undergone a holistic paradigm shift since the early 20th century. The industry changes suit as naturally as the trees presenting unending design progeny with each season. To carefully curate this process, online has been the industry's latest achievement. Shopping is made fun and easy with the digital transformation for the customers, but the mimic of retail experience onto the digital space has presented its challenges to the retailers. 

The new wave of online retail has disrupted many physical retailers; struggle to compete on price, assortment, and convenience has become a staple. AI-based advances in the e-commerce industry have also offered refuge to brick and mortar stores in recent times. It is necessary to understand the retail brands before identifying the applications of AI. The three kinds of retailers who have stood out from being under pressure are: 

1. Value-based
2. Experiential
3. Convenience

How can AI affect a transformation across the three critical areas of value, experiential, and convenience retailing?

For those retailers focused on the value, AI can enable leaner operating models to realize significant efficiencies. ML and process automation will enact as the main levers of transformation in value retail by delivering continuously cumulative, incremental benefits that have a last impact over time. 

In the case of experiential retailers, AI will assist in the delivery of more personalized and immersive retail experiences. By integrating AR and deep learning, newer applications can be unlocked to enhance the in-store journey by processing and interpreting images and texts. Developments like smart mirrors, which assist in trying on the designs digitally with the help of AR, have seen success in the early stages itself. 

As convenience retail spaces encourage the consumer friendliness, AI has already craved a mark in this area. Many convenience stores have already installed self-checkout counters and a smart camera system that interprets images captured predicting the checkout total of the customers. AI also possesses the potential to assist the convenience stores in using the limited space available to them flexibly.

On a much fundamental level, the most crucial decision a retailer in convenience need to make is the location of their stores. Since recently, the prediction of revenues for new locations has become more comfortable with AI offerings. It has the potential to collect new sources of data to segregate the local drivers for store performance. 

Regardless of what retailers focus on, may it be value, experience, or convenience, AI can provide them all something to make them meet the customers. It assists retailers in executing the systems effectively and will transform the way the store owners work with data. 

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