Envisioning digital-led retail experience

Being a customer-facing sector, retail has been at the forefront of technological innovation since a long time now. Consumers around the globe are becoming used to new technologies and devices, and their preferences extend to how they interact with retail brands and how they shop. The coming years will be a journey towards building an Intelligent Retail during which we will witness dreams of the past turn into inventions of the day and features of science fiction emerge as daily life utilities. Exploration and innovation will be the driving force of this new future.

The recently growing Retail industry is built on a new covenant of data-driven retail experiences and heightened consumer expectations. But delivering a personalized shopping experience that is relevant and valuable is no easy feat for retailers. The retailers are trying to improve quality of buying products be it online or offline. Our retail experience will face marked improvements with AI (Artificial Intelligence) gaining more acceptance. In fact, nearly all repetitive and mechanical tasks are done by machines. The boundaries of ‘Experiential’ retailing will continue to expand. By 2025, technologies such as XR (Extended Reality), naked-eye 3D display, and digital touch will define our digital experience through more immersive Digital Vision, Digital Touch, and Digital Smell.

With Networks evolving beyond connecting billions of people to connecting hundreds of billions of things, shifting the focus of network design from human cognition to machine cognition. These connected things will generate massive amounts of data which will require multi-level computing infrastructure with AI powers large enough to provide connectivity at massive scales. Moreover, delivering a consistent retail experience from homes, offices, and vehicles will require satellite broadband Internet, and a scalable network for delivering an AI-native network with deterministic experience, embedded security, and trustworthiness. 

Analytic solutions can assure that customers have a positive experience by developing a personalised customer experience, acquiring new customers and retaining them, building good relationships and providing loyalty initiatives for high-value customers. Harness the power of data to gain an actionable insight into giving your customers a tailored experience that will keep them coming back, time after time.

It is also predicted the digital and physical worlds of retail will be seamlessly converged allowing people and machines to interact through perception and emotion. AI will be everywhere powering new experiences in retail and helping us enhance our customer’s engagements in all-new ways. The retail industry is already making extensive use of digital technology will become more intelligent with AI, and that will be powered by even more energy-efficient computers that will bring us closer to zero carbon computing.

As per the industry data, digital-led retailing will generate a massive byte of data with general-purpose computing power increasing ten times and AI computing power increasing by 500 times. Imagination and creativity will determine how far we will go in the future, action will determine how quickly we will reach it. Today’s consumers want experiences that include personalization and information to help them make decisions. AI and Internet of Things technology help deliver these experiences. Smart equipment such as sensor-embedded shelves that track inventory will also change retail operations. There are still plenty of challenges to overcome on the road to digital. 

Retailing will become a new intelligent space, powered by AI, biometric recognition, optical sensors, and AR/VR that will bring new features to the retail industry. These technologies will truly transform retail from a brick mortar space to an intelligent space that combines the virtual and physical worlds.

By Kapil Bardeja, CEO & Co Founder- Vehant Technologies