Canadian Retailer - The Technology & e-Commerce Issue - 15

into the cloud, search millions upon
millions of images in a heartbeat,
and bring back results for that piece
of clothing, linking to the retailers
that sell that item. Considering that
single function, the possibilities
seem endless. It's going to completely change the face of search,
elevating the shopping experience.
The impact of AI on the operational end of retail and all of the
things that are done in a retail
environment will be just as staggering. Operational decisions have
historically been made based on
either loose data, imperfect data, gut
decisions, or intuition on the part of
store operations people. You can just
imagine the power of taking all the
guesswork out of those decisions.
With AI, retailers will have the
ability to know down to the sku what
they need to have in the store on any
given day, based on terabytes of sales history.
In-store, Lowes is already working with robots
in their southern California stores-robots
that greet people at the store's entrance, in two
languages, escort them directly to the bin in the
store where the product that they're looking for
is located, providing them with instructional
data and videos on how to use those products.
These innovations become smarter over time.
They become more intuitive and better at understanding inferences that customers are making
in their questions. AI has the potential to impact
all sides of retail in a very big way.
DJB: What about robotics in retail? What kind
of impact will that kind of technology have
on store design and the in-store customer
experience? Are retailers understanding the
challenges and some of the opportunities they
have in their current footprint?
DS: Right now, in many cases, retailers are laying
technologies on top of the infrastructure they
already have in place. They're taking the conventional retail footprint and experimenting with the
ways a robot can interact in that environment,
how AI can inform that environment, how
augmented reality can potentially give consumers more information in that environment. But
the question many within the industry haven't
effectively asked yet is "what if we were building

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a retail store for the first time, building it for the
advent of robotics and AI? How would we design
it differently?" The industry's very much on the
cusp of answering some of those questions. The
store as a mechanism for distribution of products
is becoming less effective relative to the way
consumers shop online. The store is becoming
less about a distribution vehicle for product and
more about an immediate channel for branded
experiences. Retailers are starting to understand
this. It's going to completely change the way
retailers plan, build, manage and measure their
stores going forward.
DJB: A lot of experts are talking about the
efficiency and productivity of robots. What
effect do you think the implementation of this
technology will have on the retail workforce?
DS: For decades retailers have been using
technologies in the retail environment that have
been taking responsibility away from people
in the store. With the introduction of every
inventory management system or point-of-sale
system, the industry has been systematically
dumbing down the job of the frontline sales
person. We've come to a place where the relative value of the cashier in the grocery store
or the clerk in the aisle of the store, compared
to technology, is comparably the same. A lot
of retailers are analyzing this and assessing

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