Brick and mortar grocery retailers have the potential to adopt artificial intelligence to help with stocking their stores, pricing their products and being competitive with online retailers like Amazon.
Michael Feindt, the founder of AI firm Blue Yonder that specializes in helping retailers adopt AI to change how they carry out their core processes, wrote an article in Silicon Republic about how grocery chains can use AI to operate smarter.
With online grocers rapidly adopting AI, Feindt writes that it’s important for brick and mortar retailers to “move beyond their legacy infrastructure and adopt the technologies of digital transformation.” These technologies include AI and machine learning.
Revolutionising warehouse #technology.#video #tech #supplychain #business #manufacturing #innovation #innovate #AI #artificialIntelligence #Robots #Robot #Robotics #Grocery #Shopping #Ecommerce #VR #ML #MachineLearning #MachineIntelligence #Infosec #Fintech #Data #DataScience pic.twitter.com/UDSrLJNqcw
— Orcan Intelligence (@Orcanintell) June 2, 2018
To stay competitive in a market that’s increasingly focused on consumer satisfaction, Feindt writes that adopting AI can help grocery chains stock their stores more efficiently in an effort to reduce waste and ensure customers get what they want, as well as price their products according to real-time data on deals and promotions offered by other stores.
“Is this the Future of Retail?” – This grocery store actually comes to you. Awesome idea! pic.twitter.com/yp5R7QE7G1 #retail #AI #retailtech #DX #custexp #4IR #IoT #mobility #tech #MachineLearning #innovation
— Sean Gardner (@2morrowknight) June 2, 2018
Feindt writes that stock and pricing in brick and mortar stores — two traditionally human-led domains — need to start using the data they have, and use AI to help process that data.
Paul Clarke, the CTO at Ocado (the company behind the grocery robots shown earlier) told The Telegraph that AI is “critical” to the industry, and where it’s heading.
“From our point of view artificial intelligence is the one to rule them all when it comes to the set of disruptive technologies that power our business and we already make extensive use of machine learning across our platform,” said Clarke. “But really we just think we’re getting started.”
It’s also easier than ever before for grocery chains to go beyond self-service checkouts and start using AI to optimize business, below is an infographic detailing 65 tech startups that use artificial intelligence, virtual reality… etc to usher grocery store operations into the future. This list is packed, but it’s not exhaustive.
Morning Market Map: these #tech startups have raised $1.5B+ to optimize grocery store operations with #AI, #VR, and more https://t.co/ZRgmn4bLIS pic.twitter.com/6Sp3nrsV04
— CB Insights (@CBinsights) May 30, 2018
From using AI to combat food contamination to giving allergy-sufferers peace of mind when shopping to programming shopping carts to follow consumers around the store, there are endless ways that AI can enhance grocery operations and produce tangible results.
