5 Ways AI is Changing the Retail Industry

Nowadays, millennials expect their shopping experiences to be fast and at the lowest prices. They want to know the retailers well and do not want to see any irrelevant products while shopping in a retail environment. What they want is:

1. Shorter wait times
2. Personalised recommendations for products
3. Quick order fulfilment
4. Easy checkout experience

They have grown up with getting what they want at the click of a button. As a result, the retail industry is now looking forward to implementing AI methods to survive. The optimal way to improve the real-world shopping experience is to update in-store technology. In-store application of Artificial Intelligence is engaging customers through personalized experience.

Here are 5 ways AI is bringing a change in the retail industry:

1. Creating a Database

 

Manual database creation of products and services data can be quite difficult for retail businesses. They face challenges like:

1. Working with Excel Sheets
2. Manual PIN entry
3. Poor insights
4. Incorrect data entry

Therefore, with the help of AI, retail businesses are creating descriptive metadata for all the products in their inventory. As a result, it prevents errors due to manual database creation. The AI algorithm identifies and sorts the products into categories. It also generates titles and descriptions for the products, resulting in rich metadata. As a result, SEO-based product discoverability also improves.This helps shoppers find what they are looking for—making them more likely to revisit.

2. Data Structuring and Transformation

A large marketplace that deals with hundreds of brands would find it difficult to manually structure data. So, after creating a database, it is important to store data in an easily accessible format. 

For instance, a particular brand may call a blue dress royal blue while some other brand might call it blue. So, when customers search for a blue dress, they will not see the dress of that brand which calls it royal blue. This problem can exist for many other attributes like size, length or pattern. As a result, it will affect the brand and product discoverability.

To prevent this, retailers are now using AI. It can structure and transform data from a semi-structured or an unstructured format to the one used by a marketplace. Artificial Intelligence algorithms can identify and transform attributes from tables of data or even plain text. Moreover, with enough training, it can identify patterns and auto-suggest attributes that can quickly digitize products across brands and categories. It can help with data handling processes like:

1. Cleaning
2. Categorizing
3. Searching
4. Sorting
5. Filtering

3. Driving Insights with Data Analysis

Nowadays, businesses realise the value of a collection of data. They understand that this data when analysed can provide valuable insights for their retail business. They want to identify trends and patterns that can help them make better decisions and determine the areas for improvement. Therefore, they are using Artificial Intelligence techniques. With AI, retailers can create data models to derive insights and build predictive decision engines. It will help them to analyse data and drive actionable insights. As a result, it will allow retailers to forecast trends and prepare for them accurately.

4. Transforming Shopping Experiences with AI Voice Assistants

Online shopping has become a trend in the past few years. According to Statista, 75 per cent of people shop online at least once a month. With the advancement in technology, we have seen a transformation in the way customers make an online purchase. For example, simply making purchases just by giving a voice command to an AI Voice Assistant like Alexa or Siri. 

Further, AI Voice Assistants are also transforming the customer service experience of retailers. AI-Powered Voice Bots can answer product/service related queries of customers in a human-like conversation and provide instant solutions. 

To see further applications, watch this video:

Know why your Retail business needs an AI Voice Assistant. 

5. Visualising Products Effectively

While browsing products on a retailing website, we see thousands of products catalogued by a model. This is because when shoppers see products on models, they can visualize them better. However, for people with different body shapes and sizes than the model, it might be not easy to visualise how they look. So, a solution for this could be to photoshoot a lot of models. However, this option is not pocket-friendly for retailers.

Therefore, they are adopting AI techniques here, as well. It can generate automated on-model fashion imagery and put the same dress on models of various sizes standing in different poses without having to photograph them manually. It can help to:

1. Reduce photoshoot costs
2. Speed up the market
3. Increase customer engagement
4. Reduce returns

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have seen the usage of AI in almost every part of the retail industry. Automation can completely take care of efficiency. As a result, it is giving retail teams more time to think creatively and provide a seamless experience. Therefore, it is clear how AI solutions are effectively changing this business.

We help in providing AI-Powered speech solutions like AI-Powered Voice Assistants and Speech Synthesis in the retail industry. To know more, see our services in retail. We are offering a live demo of our AI-Powered solution to answer your queries. 

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