AI for retail is transforming the way we interact with customers and fulfil orders, across every industry. Some of the industries we expect to benefit most are online retail, financial services and insurance, telecommunications and utility companies.
In the fiercely competitive e-commerce industry, AI for retail is enabling new ways to serve customers better. More than 80% of the UK population will use online retail in 2024, resulting in 100s millions of online retail transactions. With such high volumes, increasing conversion and basket sizes by serving customers better can result in significant increases in sales and revenue.
Artificial intelligence in retail enables greater automation with customer interactions, such as order and delivery tracking and returns management, resulting in better customer experience in addition to reduced operational costs.
Generative AI in retail can analyse customer behaviour, purchase history, and preferences to deliver personalised product recommendations, increasing customer engagement and conversion rates.
Virtual assistants can be on hand 24/7 to direct customers to the products they want instantly, without the need to search. The same tools can also make recommendations for adjacent or complementary products, driving increased basket size. By integrating with your stock management platform, you can also serve customers even when out of stock, and manage stock predictions better.
AI-powered pricing models can instantly scrape competitor pricing across hundreds of competitors and geographies, and analyse market demand and customer behaviour to dynamically optimise your pricing. Set your dynamic pricing engine to optimise for increasing your revenue, your profit margins or balancing both.
AI technology can analyse historical sales data, market trends, and external factors to predict future demand more accurately, optimising inventory levels and reducing stock-outs and over-stock situations. New research from NVIDIA shows 60% of retailers expect to invest in AI infrastructure over the next 18 months.
Fifty One Degrees advises companies on how to adopt AI. We recommend creating an AI strategy, within which you will manage your adoption of AI in a structured and considered way. The steps we recommend are:
Assigning responsibility and creating a project team
Analyse each area of your business to understand the most appropriate use cases
Define your AI strategy, including objectives, governance and reporting
Apply an agile software development approach to identify an initial project
With your first project live, create and roll out a roadmap to apply AI across your business, prioritising based on expected impact and implementation complexity