Consumer & Retail
Use Cases
Newsfor Consumer & Retail
Analyse and predict shrinkage
Monitoring and predicting shrinkage enables retailers and consumer product companies to crack down on potential value loss.
Analyse market basket information to optimise cross-selling and upsell
Analysing the basket of products that consumers purchase - typically in one go but also on a broader timeline - provides ample data to enable predictions on potential cross-selling and repeat purchases.
Analyse vending machine demand and product placement opportunity for optimal product mix
Analyse vending machine demands and product placement opportunity for optimal product mix. This can be a key channel in specific markets and segments.
Analyse warranty data to signal quality issues, measure risk and optimise pricing
Customer response to warranties generates a lot of data that can be mined to predict potential specific quality issues and to predict risk across the product portfolio.
Audit and optimise shelf placement
Use video, images or robots in the retail area to audit and analyse shelf space usage. Optimising shelf space drives retail sales, can reduce risk of running out of stock and it can also be use to prioritise shrinkage risk areas.
Automate customer data capture
Automating the collection of customer data including product preferences, demographics, and personal information. This data may be collected under the guise of a loyalty program or app, with AI being used to extract the relevant information.
Automate delivery to customer eg via drone or self-driving vehicle
Consider automation of delivery and other transportation cases through drones and other automated vehicles
Automate inventory management for products
Inventory Management - helping company calculate how many units are required where and when. This is precisely the sort of complex, data-rich, prediction-heavy closed loop where AI can potentially excel if the data tracking is accurate - so long as the unexpected does not intervene.
Automate point of sale
Self-checkout systems, also known as cashierless, cashier-free or automated checkouts, have increasing functionality built in to them - some of it increasingly powered by AI.
Automate protection of privacy in mapping data generation processes
Protecting the privacy of individuals as part of mapping data generation is a growing regulatory and media imperative. Typically vehicles mounted with sensors drive the streets to be mapped capturing images that include faces and number plate data. Automatically obscuring this is a necessity for the huge processing scale at which digital mapping outfits operate.
Classify visual information from in-store video to collect data on product placement, consumer activity for use in market research
Classify visual information from in-store video to collect data on product placement, consumer response and activity and other key data points for use in market research
Create personalised food menu and diet
Using personalised taste and health feedback machine learning can help recommend (and, in the future, produce) personalised dishes. More broadly it can help recommend a personal diet plan with further inputs, e.g. seasonal or regional foodstuff availability. Tying this to shopping, food distribution or travel recommendation channels helps close the supply loop.
Deliver "digital human" conversational interface with customers in physical locations
Conduct "digital human" conversational interface with customers in physical locations (e.g. banks such as Natwest, soul machines). The aim is to provide effectively online functionality via some form of automated, robotic interface.
Deliver retail experience to consumers on the move from mobile store
Deliver products to consumers on the move. One option is to stock a variety of products in a self-driving store - demand for the products and the highest relevant footfall location being predicted from multiple data sources. This may be the future of ice cream vans... but it is currently the combination of a lot of AI technologies so realisation may be some way off.
Deliver visual search capability (e.g. for apps dealing with specific product categories like wine or fashion)
Leveraging machine vision to enable customers to search products by image or video to immediately access the information they need.
Detect potentially dangerous electrical current surges
Detect potentially dangerous electrical current surges. This potentially enables systems and devices to automatically react in an appropriate fashion to minimise risk to users and devices.
Enable enhanced retail customer experience and service through chatbots
Enhanced customer''s retail experience and service through chatbots able to provide access to wide ranges of knowledge at scale.
Enable live table management and reservations across multiple booking channels
Table management and reservations is a key function for hospitality providers - often accessed through multiple distribution and booking engines. Ensuring accurate and timely information is key to optimising customer throughput and satisfaction.
Identify individual''s activity likely to result in accidents
Typically using video or camera technology to spot individuals whose activity is at risk of causing accidents or other problems. Relevant images will be flagged for potential further intervention.
Identify next best offer in customer journey to drive desired behaviour
Predict and promote the next appropriate offer for a customer to maximise chance of driving desired behaviour (e.g. sales, click-through, retention offer acceptance etc).
Identify plant type through image analysis
Using images to identify plant type will enable wider access to up to date agricultural knowledge - whether requiRed remotely (for example to track disease spread) or locally (to support better farming, gardening or rambling).
Identify vermin and propose appropriate treatment approach
Identify vermin and propose appropriate treatment approach - for example this can be deployed as an app using Google''s image classification
Make a reservation for customer
An automated assistant can make a reservation for a user - initially this has been rolled out for restaurants. Natural sounding voice interfaces helps smooth the process - but does raise potential concerns about human / robot interactions. The multi-lingual usage opportunity - for example in the tourism industry - will be considerable.
Monitor transport fleet networks in real time to ensure safety of passengers and drivers
The roll out of peer to peer transport apps creates potential security risks, particularly in markets where personal checks on users and drivers are less developed. Automated systems will highlight beahvioural anomalies that may indicate a developing security or health situation and trigger both back-up enquiries and potentially further action.
Monitor travellers for immigration control
Use of video footage potentially combined with "lie detector" analysis to make preliminary screening decisions on travellers entering protected borders. The aim is both to speed up the process and - more controversially - to achieve greater accuracy in screening results.