The retail industry has always been an early adopter of technology, and 2023 is no exception. With the pandemic accelerating the shift towards digital retail, retailers are investing heavily in new technologies to provide customers with better experiences, greater convenience, and more personalized services.

Here are the top five latest technologies transforming the retail industry in 2023:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

   – Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way retailers interact with their customers. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide customers with personalized recommendations, answer questions, and even process payments. Retailers are also using AI to analyze customer data to provide more personalized experiences, from product recommendations to targeted marketing campaigns.

2. Augmented Reality (AR)

   – Augmented reality is transforming the way customers shop. By overlaying digital information onto the real world, retailers can provide customers with a more immersive shopping experience. For example, customers can use AR to try on clothes virtually, see how furniture will look in their home, or even preview makeup looks before buying. AR is also being used to provide customers with more information about products, such as nutritional information or product reviews.

3. Internet of Things (IoT)

   – The Internet of Things is enabling retailers to gather data from connected devices to provide customers with more personalized experiences. For example, smart mirrors in dressing rooms can make product recommendations based on the customer’s preferences. In contrast, smart shelves can detect when a product is running low and automatically reorder it. Retailers are also using IoT to improve inventory management and reduce waste by tracking products in real time.

4. Blockchain

   – Blockchain technology is being used to improve supply chain transparency and reduce counterfeiting in the retail industry. By using blockchain, retailers can track products from their source to the shelf, providing customers with greater visibility into where their products come from. Blockchain can also be used to prevent fraud and protect intellectual property rights.

5. 5G Cellular Technology

   – The fifth generation of cellular technology is set to revolutionize the retail industry. With faster data speeds and lower latency, 5G will enable retailers to provide customers with more immersive experiences, such as virtual reality shopping, without the need for a wired connection. 5G will also enable retailers to process transactions more quickly and securely, reducing the risk of fraud.

The retail industry is undergoing a technological revolution, with new technologies such as AI, AR, IoT, blockchain, and 5G transforming the way retailers interact with their customers. By embracing these technologies, retailers can provide customers with more personalized experiences, greater convenience, and a more seamless shopping experience both in-store and online.

GoodWorkLabs is a leading technology and digital transformation company that helps businesses leverage the latest technologies to stay ahead of the competition. As a company that specializes in helping businesses navigate digital transformation, GoodWorkLabs understands the importance of staying on top of the latest trends in technology. By keeping up with the latest trends in technology, GoodWorkLabs is able to provide its clients with cutting-edge solutions that help them stay ahead of the curve in their respective industries.

As the retail industry continues to undergo digital transformation, businesses in this industry need to embrace new technologies to stay competitive. GoodWorkLabs can help retail businesses stay ahead of the curve by providing them with tailored solutions designed to meet their unique needs. Whether it’s developing an AI-powered chatbot or implementing a blockchain-based supply chain management system, our expert team has the expertise and experience to help businesses leverage the latest technologies to achieve their goals.

 

Conclusion on Latest Technologies for Retail Industry

In conclusion, the retail industry is undergoing a technological revolution, and businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve need to embrace new technologies. GoodWorkLabs can help businesses in the retail industry navigate this digital transformation by providing them with cutting-edge solutions that are designed to meet their unique needs. With GoodWorkLabs as their technology partner, retail businesses can leverage the latest technologies to provide customers with more personalized experiences, greater convenience, and a more seamless shopping experience both in-store and online. To connect with our team, contact us here!

Big Data in Retail Industry

The amount of data involved is huge in the retail industry. This is the reason why industry leaders keep on looking for innovative methods to make their brands more successful.

“Big data” is the name for a collection of huge amount of data. However, it is also associated with the management, storage and use of data. With more than 6 billion mobile users all over the world, big data offers retailers the ability to understand consumer behaviour and market their brands like never before.

Here are the ways big data can help retail brands getting success in their market.

1. Getting precise insights about the retail sector

With the ever-changing market, retail brands need high-quality insights regarding the brand categories, customers, technologies and other aspects. And big data technologies prove to be a perfect choice in order to bring precision in that. The brand managers can get multiple combinations of reports that weren’t possible without big data technology.

2. Accelerating the analysis process

The ability to take action at the right moment defines the success rate in the retail sector. The brands need high-performing analytics to predict and take actions. This has become feasible with modern big data technologies.

The big data technology offers the ability to generate daily predictions and analyze the market in no time. As a result, there is no need to wait for days and lose the opportunities to succeed in the market.

3. Better coordination between brand and IT

Before big data, the retail brands always felt that there was a gap between their business and IT strategies. However, this problem can go away for good with big data implements. The IT support can design applicable strategies for retail brands including factors. The exploration, visualization, simplicity of understanding and other benefits make it easier for retail brands to adapt to big data IT solutions.

4. Fast decision-making that improves supply chain

A retail brand has to manage and handle multiple steps of the supply chain from the inventory to the shelf. These steps require immediate decision-making capacities. But that is only possible when the business leaders have enough data available regarding the channels and segments associated with their supply chain.

Knowing which area is beneficial in terms of brand popularity makes it easy to manage the supply chain for high ROI. And that is exactly what big data implementation offers for the business.

5. Understanding and fulfilling customer demands

The whole foundation of the retail industry lies in the demands of customers. Retail brands need to understand those demands in real-time in order to stock the right products and provide them to the customers. The big data presents the opportunity to get accurate data on customer demands, which helps in forecasting the potential sales. As a result, brands can stock the necessary quantity and save themselves from wastage and loss.

Big data technologies offer all those solutions that any retail brand requires in order to succeed in the market. So, it would be a smart strategy to find such solutions and get your brand visible and successful.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the Retail Industry

While the world is busy talking about Artificial Intelligence powered technologies such as self-driven cars, machines challenging human intelligence at a game of chess, and AI technologies in recruitment, there still remains an untapped potential for AI in the retail industry.

With most retailers now focusing towards providing an omnichannel experience for their shoppers, AI can play a crucial role in disrupting the retail industry.

Creating Smart Shops with Artificial Intelligence

While AI assistants such as Siri and Google Home help us maintain our day-to-day groceries list and change our shopping experience, an ideal situation would be to walk into a smart store without any shop attendees or long check-out queues.

Imagine a shopping experience where you can just enter a shop, pick up the stuff you want, a bunch of facial recognition algorithms process your purchase, and automatically money gets deducted from your digital wallet when you leave the store! Suddenly, shopping seems to become more of technology experience.

Amazon has been marginally successful in replicating this experience for customers with its Amazon Go grocery store. In order for shoppers to use this, they need to install the Amazon Go app. There are digital sensors on the shelves that detect when purchases are made and the money gets deducted from the customer’s account when he or she exits the shop.

Amazing isn’t it? This is what a future-ready AI store should ideally look like!

 

Predicting online customer behavior with Machine Learning

We live in a digital world today where every minute truckload of data about customer behavior is recorded and stored. But most companies struggle in extrapolating this data into actionable steps that can increase their ROI by 10X times.

You may have luxurious marketing and advertising budgets to target your customers, to get awesome click-through rates, but how are you making your customers tip over the fence and make a sale?

With Machine Learning tools, you can create an intelligent and automated marketing system that helps you with:

• customer segmentation
• predicting customer value and
• designing product recommendations.

But it doesn’t end with just that. Machine learning also helps us optimize our Ad budgets and invest them in the right customers.

In a world where resources and time are always limited, we are forced to make quick and smart decisions. But machine learning algorithms are programmed to analyze this huge pool of customer data within a fraction of seconds and identify customers who are 65% more likely to make a purchase. Thus, in this way, ML helps to justify and set optimum ad bids to target customers.

Product recommendation is another favorite pick for top marketers. ML helps to analyze online customer behavior in depth, such as the products they are interested in, the blogs they read, the price ranges they operate at etc. Based on all these interactions, a business can invest in curating content that makes the shopping experience as “personal” as possible.

 

Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing in the Retail industry:

AI and cognitive computing are adding the “innovation” to the retail industry. Creating an omnichannel experience for customers has become the top most priority for retail brands.

Out of the many retail sections, in this blog post we are going to concentrate mainly on two AI integrated retail categories:

1) Product Recommendations:

IBM’s Watson, powered with its cognitive computing abilities is an excellent choice for brands who are looking to provide both in-store and online product recommendations.

 

• AI-powered retail store

In this example, we see how a New York based wine company called Wine4Me decided to choose the AI technology of IBM Watson to make in-store wine recommendations for its customers. The goal was to make wine shopping an easy and personalized experience.

But the first step was to provide Watson with ample data from wine tasters and also teach Watson how people ask and shop for wine. Based on the occasion, price, sweetness,  brand, and age of the wine, Watson should be able to bring up a list of wine recommendations that would suit the customer’s demand.

Now, this whole AI-powered shopping technology works as a win-win for both the retailer and the customer. Customers, on one hand, enjoy a hassle-free and engaging shopping experience while retailers can make better inventory decisions by tracking customer preferences.

 

• AI-powered digital store

In this example, we will talk about how the San-Francisco based premium brand The North Face integrated Watson on its digital platform to create an unparalleled shopping experience for its customers. The North Face is a premium outdoor product company specializing in outerwear, coats, backpacks etc

Though SEO filters and keyword phrases help in attracting customers to the website, most brands forget to communicate with their customers to help them find what they want. This is where AI can help you establish that user connect.

Let us assume that a user wants to buy a jacket online, then the AI platform asks the user a series of questions such as the purpose of the jacket, the time period during which he will use it, which place will be visiting, color preferences, material preferences and so on. The user is free to answer all these questions in his own style and type in any response.

With every response, the AI will trigger a series of product recommendations that closely match the user’s requirement. Now, this sounds fancy, doesn’t it?

But it all boils down to data and also literally teaching the AI what would the possible use case scenarios be that users would identify themselves with. Even the most non-obvious statements and taken for granted business scenarios need to be keyed in so that the AI helps to generate the right response.

This next-generation online shopping experience is sure to make both customers and retailers conscious of their expectations. Thus, if used in the right way, AI has great potential to provide product recommendations that can increase revenue from sales by 10x.

 

2. In-store Sales:

AI is all set to change the traditional shopping experience when a customer walks into the store. With e-commerce booming, you find lesser customers who are willing to enter a store and interact with a store assistant.

So, how can AI help in increasing the customer foot-fall at a brick and mortar retail store? The answer is simple – by using AI-powered robots.

Pepper,  a humanoid robot from Softbank’s robotics company has been in the news for enriching the customer shopping experiences at retail stores and serving as a retail concierge. Stores across the US, who have adopted Pepper as their smart shop assistant, have recorded almost 70% increase in customer walk-ins and sales.

Now that’s huge, isn’t it?

But what does this humanoid Pepper do differently from a salesman?

Firstly, Pepper acts as a brand ambassador for the store that drives in customers. Based on sheer curiosity, customers are more likely to stop by your store to experience an interaction with a robot who could help them with their shopping decisions. It almost feels like having a friendly celebrity with whom you can take a tour of the store.

Secondly, the humanoid robot is programmed to sense movement, emotion, offer shopping advice, product information, etc. Thus, it helps the user make an informed purchase. It has a tablet positioned on its chest where the user can key in his preferences and based on that Pepper will offer suggestions.

This definitely boosts user engagement and conversations inside a store. And the best part is that Pepper is always connected to the internet and all the data thus collected is stored in the cloud. So, next time when the same customer enters the shop, it becomes easy to showcase products based on his/her interests.

Thus, Pepper helps to automate all the obvious and mundane tasks at a retail store and transform in-store shopping into an engaging and joyful experience for customers.

 

The future of Artificial Intelligence in Retail

While we are positive and hopeful that the future of retail is likely to be dictated by AI, we also notice that there is still time until this technology gets widely accepted in stores around the world.

One of the major constraints involves high budgets, thus making it easy only for the bigger players such as Amazon, Walmart, Target etc to become early adopters of such technologies.

But having said that, it is time that retailers identify the potential that AI and Machine Learning can make to their business and take steps to make the shift soon.

If you would like to build an AI-powered solution for your retail business, then drop us a short message with your requirements

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“Internet of Things” is not a new concept. You can find its roots dating back to as far as the 90’s. It is the network of objects that can communicate through the internet. Retailers can take a huge advantage with IoT as it can help them streamline operations and lead to better efficiencies and cost reduction. There are international retail chains which use IoT for numerous purposes. Check out the 5 ways in which retailers can benefit from IoT.

Tagging

If you have a retail store dealing in F&B products, you can use radio frequency tagging. This practice is very beneficial in preventing shoplifting. You can set sensors on the entry and exit doors of your store to restrict anyone from accidentally or purposely taking a product without paying for it. Once a customer pays for a tagged product, sensors are disabled so that they do not raise a false alarm.

Tagging can also be used to track electronic devices in order to prevent their theft. Through tagging a retailer can track an electronic product in real time and can locate it wherever it goes. Not only retailers, it is also beneficial for their customers in case the product is lost after purchase.

Warehouse/Inventory

IoT is a boon to retail warehouse and inventory management. You can track the location of all your products within the inventory and warehouse and also keep yourself updated about their availability. Retailers can know the units of a product available with them through IoT and can easily decide whether they will need more or not. Walmart adopted IoT for smart optimisation of its inventory which runs into millions of products. Adoption of IoT has given them an early mover advantage and helped them stay ahead in the game.

Price Optimization

We all know about the four Ps of marketing and how important the price of a product is. IoT lets you optimize the price of a retail product automatically. It will take the usual demand vs supply ratio along with the prices of the same product available with other retailers into account. It also optimizes the price of a product which is being readily purchased by customers at a particular time.

Delivery Services

If you are an online retailer, then using IoT is a must. It will let you speed up your delivery process. It can help you track the logistics easily and know exact shipping status from source to destination. You also be able to keep a track of time taken by a delivery vehicle to reach a certain destination.

Maintenance

IoT helps you get real time updates about the health of a product. In case the product is in warranty period, tracking health becomes more important. Though it now where connected to retailers but still it is worth mentioning that F1 teams keep a tab on every aspect of their car running on the track and know the exact amount of fuel it is carrying. Similarly, you can keep a note of the issues a product is facing after it was sold.

Know of any other practical application of IoT in the retail sector? Write in to us with your comments.