EXCLUSIVE: Personalizing store experiences through AI
Retailers need the agility to quickly deliver personalized store experiences in an ever-changing landscape — and artificial intelligence (AI) could be the catalyst to drive this evolution.
With access to rich data and its high-speed analytics, AI enables retailers to analyze customer expectations, key engagement touch points and optimal layouts. These deeper insights enable retailers to make store design decisions much quicker and more accurately.
Paul Wolski, senior VP, creative director, Miller Zell, spoke with Chain Store Age’s Deena Amato-McCoy about how AI will drive the next level of personalized and immersive experiences at physical stores.
What are the biggest advantages to using AI?
It all comes down to speed. AI gives retailers the speed needed to adapt and respond to the ever-changing landscape of shifting customer tastes, performance metrics and store conditions. AI also offers incredible speed when calculating and processing data, synthesizing outcomes, generating recommendations and automating processes.
These are just a few of the myriad of ways AI can dramatically maximize efficiencies, streamline processes and sharpen response time needed to make decisions and changes in real-time — especially when creating immersive experiences.
How does AI improve analytics and thus, store designs?
Retailers can become more nimble and responsive to change at the store level by using AI. For example, AI analytics can quickly generate various scenarios that can optimize store layouts and suggest merchandising resets that better position inventory based on customer traffic patterns, dwell time and sales data.
Running these kinds of studies in real-time allows retailers to react in the moment and feel more proactive about taking necessary corrective actions to modify outcomes.
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How does AI drive the next level of experience personalization?
Using AI to understand existing customer data, preferences and predictive purchase cues among key engagement touch points, retailers can tailor experiences to individual shoppers as they move from online experiences to the physical store. This ensures a seamless brand experience for shoppers.
However, the process does require a nuanced approach, as customers may feel that “knowing them” too well can feel somewhat invasive.
What are the biggest challenges holding back retailers from fully embracing AI in store design?
From an infrastructure perspective, AI can seem like a daunting undertaking, one that spans the technology investment and data management to resource expertise. Making the time to on-ramp AI can also be a challenge for retailers already dealing with the demands of existing “business-as-usual” work-streams and in-progress store initiatives.
There’s also a struggle when overcoming any bias or conflicting perceptions around the extent to which teams want AI to affect their processes — not to mention their role. Acknowledging the AI awareness spectrum within your organization and the extent to which you need to align the cultural mindset to confront the reality of AI is a critical first step toward taking any kind of action.
What advice would you give retailers just dipping their toe in AI waters?
AI can be wielded in so many ways, from conceptual ideation to more tactical applications. Thus, grant yourself the time and runway to get comfortable using AI. It can generate immediate design recommendations and scenarios, but ultimately you are the driver. As the decision maker, you will know how to best interpret and apply those findings in a way that makes sense for your store performance, your customer experience and your brand.
