Esther Cardenal

In the competitive retail industry, providing an exceptional shopping experience is key to attracting and retaining customers. In this context, smart shelving has emerged as a revolutionary technological solution that not only optimises product management, but also improves customer interaction. Smart shelves are transforming the retail shopping experience, offering tangible benefits for both businesses and customers. Personalised shopping experience Smart shelves enable a highly personalised shopping experience by offering relevant information and product suggestions as customers browse the aisles. These shelves are equipped with NFC price tags, video rails and displays that show details, reviews and ratings from other customers, as well as product videos or recommendations for cross-selling other products. Image: macrovector / Freepik RFID technology that enables product recognition, detecting which item has been selected, and triggering additional information that can influence the customer's purchasing decision. ✔️ Example: A customer is looking for an iron in the electronics section. When approaching the smart shelves, the digital price tag shows the discount highlighted in red, the technical characteristics of the item and the rating of other customers. In addition, when approaching their NFC-enabled smartphone, it shows you the video of how to use it and can recommend complementary accessories, such as protective covers for the ironing board. Dynamic pricing; improved efficiency, sustainability, and improved margins Staff shortages are an issue for all retailers today, making it all the more important to find task automation tools; not only to ensure staff shortages, but also to enable staff to take on more important and impactful work for the business. A key part of smart shelves are the digital price tags themselves, which allow price changes to be automated and streamlined, so that staff do not spend hours changing prices on paper, with the high implementation costs that this entails, and reduce paper spend to be more sustainable, an important challenge for all businesses. Digital labels also reduce errors between the prices displayed on the shelf and those at the checkout; and the fact of speeding up price changes allows them to react in time to competition and improve margins. ✔️ Example: A chain of petrol stations raising the price +2% at night and on Sundays allowed them to increase gross margin +0.2% and increase sales thanks to real-time price changes. Moving from manual price change processes to automated pricing with digital price tags means optimised margins and cost savings. Stock management and improved replenishment It has been shown that 32% of customers stop buying a product when it is out of stock, and 12% buy from competitors, so tracking and monitoring shelf stock is a critical but challenging task. Image: macrovector / Freepik Smart shelves facilitate this process by providing real-time data on stock levels. Cameras integrated into the shelves constantly monitor product availability and send automatic notifications to employees when products need to be replenished. This prevents out-of-stock situations and ensures that products are always available to customers. ✔️ Example: In a supermarket, chocolate-filled biscuits are on promotion. Smart shelves detect the lack of stock on each shelf and alert to the lack of the biscuits. The employee checks the mobile APP and gives a priority task to replenish the stock of biscuits on the shelf, to ensure that customers always find the product they want without having to wait or look elsewhere, and to ensure that brands do not lose sales. Smart retail: Information analysis and data-driven decision-making Another significant benefit of smart shelves in the retail sector is the ability to collect valuable data on customer shopping behaviour and which days and times each product is out of stock, indicating shopping trends. Local computer vision to monitor a retailer's inventory while protecting customer privacy is an Edge AI use case. Photo: Sony. The cameras integrated into these shelves can collect information on which products are selected most frequently, which products are missing each day throughout the month and which campaigns have the greatest impact on purchasing decisions. This data can be analysed to gain key insights into customer preferences, the effectiveness of marketing strategies and optimisation of product layout in the shop. ✔️ Example: A grocery shop uses smart shelves, and through data analysis, discovers which days of the week milk is missing from the shelves. With this information, the company decides to manage product delivery days with the brands to ensure stock replenishment, and also changes prices according to milk demand and advertises cereal promotions on the displays next to dairy products, thus increasing margin, cross-selling possibilities and maximising revenue. Reduction of waste in greengrocers The biggest problem in food establishments is the loss of fruit and vegetables due to the deterioration of the products and the difficulty in controlling the stock. Thanks to technology such as computer vision and artificial intelligence, the greengrocer's area is transformed into smart shelves, informing in real time of the level of stock of each fruit and identifying the freshness of the product. In this way, the price of fruit that is losing freshness is automatically lowered to encourage sales and those that are low in stock are replenished, increasing sales and reducing waste. Conclusion Smart shelves are revolutionising the retail shopping experience by providing personalised interaction, efficient inventory management and valuable data analytics. These technology solutions not only provide tangible benefits for retailers, such as increased customer satisfaction and inventory optimisation, but also significantly enhance the shopping experience, allowing consumers to access relevant information and make informed decisions. In an increasingly digital world, smart shelves have become an indispensable tool for success in the retail sector. AI of Things What are physical shops and how are they transforming shopping? July 19, 2023 Image: Macrovector / Freepik.

Have you ever wondered if you are using the right strategies to improve your shop's performance? Or what you need to do to improve the customer experience at the point of sale? If so, it means you know the importance of analytics and insights to make impactful business decisions. It is natural to have doubts, especially if you don't have the means to really quantify the benefits of your in-store strategies. Data, a key asset for business Data is a key enabler for business, as the difference between winning or losing a customer is the ability to collect, analyse and derive actionable information fast enough to respond to changing customer needs. The only solution is to measure, but it's not just about knowing the sales achieved at the end of each day, it's about finding new ways to improve efficiency and personalise the customer experience. But what are the right metrics to measure efficiency in a shop? How can we know which customers are coming into our shops? What actions do I need to take? Indoor insights for a complete funnel The futuristic scenario introduced by Steven Spielberg in his 2002 film 'Minority Report', in which we saw Tom Cruise being greeted as he entered a shop and the advertising on the screens being personalised, is now a reality. We can even get to know the profile of potential visitors to the area, how many come in and whether customers approach, look at and touch certain products. It sounds like science fiction, but having the complete sales funnel is possible thanks to indoor insights. You can identify which factors are negatively affecting your revenue and be proactive with shop improvements, providing you with measurable targets and a favourable ROI on your new technology investment by providing more accurate data on shop activities and new insights into customer behaviour and preferences. Extracting valuable information from data However, the amount of data can be overwhelming and the data sources can be very varied, so it is key to look for a partner that is able to unify all the data to provide the complete business funnel in a simple way. Do you know the potential audience in the area where your shop is located? What are their web preferences, their tastes? What is the conversion rate to the shop? How many come into your business? Which segment converts better or worse? What is the actual conversion rate? Are they all customers? Or do they come in groups, families, couples? Which doors or areas of the shop have the highest conversion rate? How long do they stay inside, how do they move around your shop? What areas do they visit, where do they stay the longest? What products do they look at? Which ones do they touch? These questions are important because knowing the answers gives you a real picture of how your business is performing, helps you solve problems, support new ideas or the creation of new products and services, and ultimately, actionability to improve revenue. Use cases As we already mentioned in a previous article, the combination of data from outdoor location analytics tools with data generated inside the shop through video or wifi analytics solutions enables multiple use cases: Have end-to-end traceability of the sales funnel within the shop Personalise marketing content according to the profile of the public that is visiting them at any given time; Improve processes and manage resources by knowing dwell times in different areas, waiting times at checkout points, or conversion rates of previously analysed points of interest; Optimise staff schedules according to demand, peaks, location or other factors; Change product selection, assortment repositioning and even shop layout design based on audience type and conversion to specific products and areas. Integration with the Proximity Marketing App to send messages to customers to alert them to the location of the self-checkout area if there are queues at the checkout counters on the floor where the customer is located; Integration with the content management platform to change dynamic marketing screen advertising or music based on the profile of customers in shop. In short, we can conclude that having better data allows us to make better decisions in order to obtain more profit from our business, which is what all companies seek. If you want to know more applications of the fusion of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, known to us as AIoThings, you can read other articles in the series: AI OF THINGS AI of Things(I): Multiplying the value of connected things February 28, 2022 IA & Data AI of Things (II): Water, a sea of data March 16, 2022 AI of Things IoT anomalies: how a few wrong pieces of information can cost us dearly September 18, 2023 AI of Things AI of Things (IV): You can already maximise the impact of your campaigns in the physical space April 26, 2022 AI of Things AI of Things (V): Recommendation and optimisation of advertising content on smart displays May 17, 2022 AI of Things Generative Artificial Intelligence, creating music to the rhythm of perceptron July 18, 2023