Goals and challenges in retail

  • 3 minutes

Today, retail companies face external pressures to keep up with the speed of competitors, consumers, and technical innovations. Meanwhile, they’re also under internal pressure to maximize cost savings and return on investment (ROI). AI is more than just another piece of the technological landscape to which retail organizations must adapt. Instead, think of AI as a powerful tool to successfully satisfy these demands.

Goals

When retail organizations implement AI solutions, they usually pursue these business goals.

  • Boost business and financial KPIs: At the end of the day, any AI initiative must result in tangible benefits, such as cost savings or a positive ROI. You should be able to measure AI success.
  • Improve customer experience: AI offers many options to take care of customers in new or more efficient ways.
  • Streamline processes: Optimization use cases are a typical scenario for AI. Many retail processes can be simplified and made more efficient with AI solutions.
  • Increase speed and scale: Sales results greatly depend on how large your audience is and how fast you can reach it. AI can allow you to reduce your time to market and the size of your audience.
  • Empower and serve digital natives: Audiences are changing, partly because younger generations buy differently and have different expectations when shopping. Incorporating AI into the experience can help attract and retain these customers.
  • Facilitate returns: Order returns are an inevitable part of the online shopping experience. However, their logistics are often challenging as you need to reverse the order’s last mile. AI systems enable you to track these orders.

Photograph showing customer paying with a credit card.

Challenge

The major challenge for AI solutions in retail is that most purchases still occur in-store. Traditionally, retail companies focused their AI initiatives on online commerce. Retail companies still struggle finding ways to incorporate AI into offline shopping experiences.

However, cross-channel purchases like ordering online for in-store pickup are expected to grow. These hybrid shopping experiences are a promising strategy worth exploring.

Tip

Take a moment to consider other goals and challenges specific to your organization. Photograph showing people working and talking around a table.

Next, let’s explore common scenarios in which AI can help you attain these goals.