Tracking shoppers via the signals broadcast by their mobile devices has been a very popular way for retailers to measure precise footfall in stores, mainly since the smart phone revolution really kicked off in the early 2010’s. However, in recent years this method of shopper tracking has become almost impossible to sustain. \nThe reason for this is that the MAC addresses of mobile devices are now being heavily randomized by companies like Apple and Samsung to protect the privacy of their users. The “spoofing” of MAC addresses involves devices emitting a brand-new signal multiple times an hour to give inconsistent data to any other technologies trying to track a particular device. \nMAC stands for Media Access Control, and a MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to every network interface on a device, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. While it is still possible to record shoppers via their MAC addresses, the data could never be truly consistent given the randomization of these numbers. A shopper could be counted multiple times, giving the impression that it is more than one person. Also, while it is rare, some shoppers may enter a store without having a phone on their person, meaning they would be exempt from a store’s attempt to gather precise footfall. \nThe most accurate way to track a shopper by MAC address is for an individual to manually sign in to a store’s Wi-Fi, giving consent to the retailer to use their data in the process. The signal would not give much data about the shopper, however. A retailer would not be able to see the identity, age, gender, or purchase preferences of this shopper. \n\n\n\nThere are concerns in the public sphere of having personal devices tracked, where knowledge of the attempted tracking is not known or advertised. The lack of consent and potential misuse of data for targeted advertising, price discrimination, and similar unethical practices are some of the main public concerns. \nBrands like Apple and Samsung have put measures in place to protect their customers. Apple use Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and Samsung have updated all devices from their series 10 onwards with default enabled MAC randomization. \nThis means that if a retailer tried to gather data on iPhone and Samsung users via MAC addresses, their data would have the potential to be extremely inaccurate. Taking North America for example, 52% of Americans use Apple phones and 28% are using Samsung. So, 80% of the overall shopper bases would effectively be immune to shopper tracking. \nThere are and have always been alternatives to MAC Address tracking for retailers. This would include the likes of loyalty programmes to collect data on shoppers’ individual preferences and purchase history, customer feedback via surveys or forms, or by using visual analytics to gain insights in real time.\nWhile tracking MAC addresses might seem like a relatively sensible and easy way to gather shopper data, it cannot be considered a truly reliable approach in the era of ITP and MAC randomization. There are of course, some ethical concerns by the shopping public, who would much rather the option of opting-in to allow their data to be tracked by a retailer. As there are much more consistent technologies for shopper tracking and profiling, retailers should ideally look elsewhere than rely on MAC addresses.

MAC tracking is unreliable; retailers need ethical alternatives like loyalty programs and visual analytics.

Can shoppers be tracked via their phone MAC addresses?

\n\n2025 was VisionR’s third National Retail Federation Big Show, and we managed to pack an enormous amount in while there. We were exhibiting from 12th-14th January at booth number 559, our largest stall to date. \nOur full first day in New York was spent getting things ready at the Javit’s Center, while taking in a bit of the city. Walking through Times Square and Central Park were a must, considering our hotel was placed mere minutes’ walk from both, and we spent a good amount of time at our spiritual home, Rudy’s Bar and Grill, home of the $4 pint with free Glizzy (slang for hotdog).\n\n\nWe were invited by Vusion, a large retail analytics company, to a mixer at the Skylark Bar, overlooking the Chrysler building. We ended up spending a lot more time there than originally planned as we were treated so well by the organisers and were given the chance to learn from several retail tech experts in a casual setting. \nThe Innovation Breakfast at the Consulate took place at 200 Park Avenue, a pristine building with one of the largest lobbies I’ve ever seen. With representatives of Irish and US business in attendance, Sharon Yourell Lawlor, hosted a panel talk, detailing new technologies in the realm of physical retail space.\n\n\nOran Mulvey spoke on behalf of VisionR to a packed-out room, who had just been treated to a traditional Irish breakfast, which included both white and black puddings, scrambled egg, sausages, rashers, and lots of hot coffee and tea. \nOn the opening night of NRF’s Big show, we were able to meet Paula Abdul, as the former LA Lakers cheerleader choreographer and pop music sensation wished us well on our retail insights journey. She is now a bonafide VisionR advocate, and we are thrilled to have her onboard as an unofficial/unwitting ambassador for the brand. \n\n\nThe real standout of our time in New York however, was the time spent speaking with retailers either at our own booth or at events hosted before and after the main floor was open. We spoke to hundreds of people, all with incredible interest in measuring their in-store shopper activity.\nOur stall featured an immaculate white couch, where passers by could rest their weary legs. We had two large television screens, showcasing how VisionR’s technology works via its edge-processing and live stream capabilities. Armed with brochures, battlecards, and chocolate, we spoke with interested parties for three days straight. \n\n\nOur stall was very popular, possibly due to the pyramid of complimentary Butler’s treats we had front and centre, which was very successful at attracting chocolate lovers, as well as retail insights afficionados. It was also a joy bumping into our friends from Ireland, including but not limited to Jean McCabe, Melissa Moore, Paul Gallagher, Seamus McHugh, Sean Higgins and Sharon Yourell Lawlor.\n\n\nAs always, we like to see interesting technologies in the modern retail space, one of which was PAL robotics, where Stockbot was featured, a 6-foot-tall robot on wheels. StockBot integrates RFID technology for accurate stock tracking and navigates autonomously to streamline inventory management. This NASA-looking bi-wheeled automaton, lit up of faces each time we passed him/her/they/it on the way to our booth. \n\n\nBooxi, another stall with very impressive displays and infographics, were a company we enjoyed having a chin wag with. They are an online scheduling appointments application that shoppers can use to plan their visits to stores and elevate their experiences.\nAlso, Inspectorio, were a lovely bunch of people, who are revolutionising supply chain management. Even though I cannot remember every aspect of what they do, I can confirm that they loved showing up to work each day and spreading the good word of their performance optimizing, resilience building solution, for brands, retailers, and their multi-tier suppliers. \nOverall, VisionR’s time in the Big Apple was enjoyable, productive, fulfilling, and dare I say, inspirational. We will most definitely return for NRF’s Big Show in 2026, where we’re hoping to mingle again with familiar friends, a whole new cast of characters, and of course, Stockbot. 

VisionR at NRF: Highlights include Booxi’s scheduling tools,  and plans to return in 2026 for more inspiration and connections.

VisionR at NRF 2025

I wanted to write a piece on this topic, as it’s falling into that buzzword territory in retail. We all love the idea of a personalised shopping experience for ourselves, but the world is full of millions of other people, so how can a single brand or store be personal for everyone?  \nHyper-personalisation is the 2020’s version of the previous decade’s standard “personalisation”. At its core, hyper-personalization in retail is the process by which retailers utilise shopper data and AI to anticipate, predict, and deliver upon the needs of customers, before the customer themselves. \nSteve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, stated \n“Our job is to figure out what they [customers] are going to want before they do… People don’t know what they want until you show it to them… Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”\nIn this Steve Jobs quote, he is not really talking about the customer as one unique special customer out of several million. He is probably thinking of the customer as one homogenous hivemind, broken down into maybe 10 or 20 easy to understand chunks by age and gender profile. There are teenage customers, middle aged, and older, and products should be brought out tailoring to each, in order to remain relevant cross-demographic, region, and economic stratum. \n\n\n\nMost retailers today are rich in data. A brand’s E-commerce and Social Media teams should have a great understanding of their shopper through cookies and clicks, purchases and feedback through the website, but also how the public perceive your brand through social channels, in contrast to your competition. Big data combined with AI has, in the last decade, been seen as the answer to hyper-personalization. Our brand has all this shopper data; let’s now use AI tools to compartmentalize everything and this will show us who we are and where we need to improve. \nSocial media savvy consumers (excluding paid influencers) will highlight brands for their best products, the overall vibe of their in-store experience, the impact of staff, and much more. This is the power of the connected world and many brands suffer from a perceived lack of customer care in the eyes of the modern clued-in shopper. People will generally tell you what they think of you online. Are you a cool brand? A responsible brand? A cost-effective, yet good quality brand? A brand only for higher earners? A brand where older people feel younger if they buy from you or vice versa? \nJack Stratten, director at Insider Trends and RETHINK Retail Top Expert has an interesting take on the future of retail, in which brand loyalties may decrease amongst the next generation. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha, hit the working world with their disposable incomes, he feels that a new generation is likely to brand hop rather than remain loyal. He believes that “Retailers need to look more closely at the wider culture in which we now live” and that “younger customers have an insatiable appetite for new brands.\n\nCan hyper-personalization be done without AI?\nShops have evolved, for the most part, through “hyper-personalisation” but in a more natural and slowly evolving way.  A shoe shop from mid 20th century may have initially just sold shoes. But if that shop is still around today, it will probably sell socks, insoles, cleansing sprays, wax oils, polish, rain and stain protectors, different coloured laces, and many more footwear related paraphernalia. Because these are all things that people buying footwear will think about as add-ons to their shoe-buying mission. This would spawn from customer feedback, competition, and common sense; all of which require just the “I” from AI. \nSo, the short answer is yes, but what is lacking is the ability to measure, analyse, and act on your shopper data, other than merely patting oneself on the back for all of that intelligent product purchasing you did. Through the rapid onboarding of AI tools across the retail spectrum, it’s clear that AI tools are a necessity in order to quickly assess your shoppers’ behaviours, habits, and buying patterns as well as a way to eliminate wrong information, hearsay, and error margins from a business strategy approach. Members of different teams within organisations should really be singing off the same hymn sheets, rather than making decisions based off gut-feeling or a belief that the tried and tested will ring true again.\n\nBut does the shopper even really know what they want?\nFood shopping is my most regular form of shopping and I tend to visit one of three large brands, once a week. When shopping I have universal basics I need to get, many of which I am happy to buy supermarket’s own brand at the lowest price, but for most other items, I am watching for discounts.\nSo, I am not necessarily buying the same items each week. I will fall for the yellow stickers again and again and the 3 for 2’s and the 50% off’s and will end up with new selections of quite random items like sauces, ice creams, ready meals, vegan options, all because the prices were good (as far as I’m aware).\n\n\n\nWhen shopping in fashion retail, I generally have an idea of what I’m looking for, but again I’ll be very tempted by the sale section and will only buy full price if the item I need does not have any good variants in the sale section. So, for me, it’s always sale first, full price items later. This isn’t obviously how everybody shops, but if you were a Tesco, a SuperValu, a JD Sports, a Boots, or a UNIQLO, you’d have a pretty good way of manipulating what’ll be in my basket through your yellow tags and stickers.\nHyper-personalisation, in theory and by definition, is a way of predicting and delivering a product range to your shopper that will delight and surprise them into purchasing, as you have delivered a need to them, they have yet to anticipate. Depending on your store, this can mean many things. A store selling groceries may want an aisle fully stacked with every additional add-on a shopper could think of when it comes to pasta or noodles, but does this mean that every packet of peanut and oyster infused mix in flavouring will be sold off your shelves? Of course it won’t.\nIf you’re a suit retailer, and you buy in pink shirts to go with your popular navy suits, does this guarantee that every man buying a navy suit will then also buy a pink shirt? Of course it doesn’t. There is obviously a balance between hyper-personalisation, and I guess “hyper-generalisation”, but it’s clear that a store with the tools to measure and predict their shoppers’ needs will have an edge over their competition, even if it’s a resource they only lean into for certain key retailing decisions. 

How AI and shopper data are transforming retail with hyper-personalization to anticipate customer needs and enhance experiences.

What is Hyper-Personalisation in Retail?

 Several news publications like the Irish Times and Irish Examiner have been commenting on lower interest in Black Friday this year, citing mistrust in the products themselves and uncertainty over whether the deals are really all that beneficial. The elongation of Black Friday could lead shoppers to think, why buy now when the deal will probably still be there in a week or two anyway?\nBrands like Primark, Home Bargains, Mr. Price, and other famously low-cost or discount retailers, choose to opt out of Black Friday, highlighting that their shoppers will get amazing deals all year round. Next emphasises that it is their January Sale (Or December 26th onwards sale) that is their big sale event and that Black Friday just muddles up that set-in-stone process. \nMany retailers choose January 31st as their end of fiscal year, meaning that there are a lot of reasons to have a sale in this period. Shoppers may have extra cash to spend, as they may have been gifted it over Christmas, retailers have leftover stock from Christmas that they wish to clear, and throw into the mix that a lot of people have time off before they go back to work. Some people may not return to work until January 10th or thereabouts, leading to a perfect storm for retail shopping.\nSo, why the need for a sale on Black Friday? \nThe explanations I look through are mostly that it occurred by accident, because there was a particular Friday before Christmas that American retailers noticed had a large spike in sales. The reason being that a lot of out-of-town folk would come into the cities and get their shopping done early. Some would even take extended vacation or sick days around Thanksgiving to get their Christmas shopping out of the way. It had more to do with avoiding the rush of crowds, than taking advantage of discounts. Incredibly ironic, considering how we now picture retail shopping on Black Friday. \nIn Ireland, our Christmas shopping phenomenon was always around December 8th, when people from across the country were known to flock to Dublin in particular, to get their Christmas shopping done early. It’s now quaint to think that December 8th qualified as early Christmas shopping when Black Friday is set two weeks prior. \nIt is interesting as well to see that the Black Friday sale begins a week before Black Friday. Maybe over the next years, we’ll see Black Friday begin mid-November. Maybe ten years from now, we’ll just have a pre-Christmas sale that begins on November 1st, making Black Friday an irrelevance.\n\n\n\nLarge retailers like B&M and TKMaxx have in the past ignored Black Friday but have recently dedicated an entire month to special deals, in order to participate in the shopper frenzy, but in more of an uncommitted-to-the-bit way. Essentially, this could amount to putting up some signs and directing people towards a section of the store that is normally reserved for discounted items anyway. \nNBC News detailed Black Friday’s impact in 2024 with Zoe Malin interviewing Barbara Kahn, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University School of the University of Pennsylvania. \n“Retailers used to compete with one another to see who could open the earliest on Black Friday, and some even welcomed shoppers into stores on Thanksgiving. “Everyone wanted to participate in the rat race to see who could get people to run to their stores first,” says Kahn. This transformed Black Friday into a five-day shopping weekend beginning on Thanksgiving and ending on Cyber Monday. Now, because so much shopping happens online during that period, experts named it the Cyber Five. But as these five days expanded into a week and then multiple weeks, experts dubbed all of November “Black November.”\nAs mentioned at the start of the article, some retailers choose not to participate at all in Black Friday, as from the outside, it could be seen as a sale period that is spiralling out of control. We are seeing however, different takes on the Black Friday phenomenon from certain brands. \nMany retailers are contributing to “Green Friday”, considered in some ways to be an antithesis to Black Friday. Rituals, for example are running a sale where you can buy their refills for a certain percentage off, to help promote non-wasteful shopping habits. Dille & Kamille, Kilkenny Design, and many others all have their own Green Friday shopping alternatives as a way of attracting in shoppers. \nKeela, the Scottish outdoor brand has what it calls “Bright Friday”, where there are some small discounts to stock, but the major offer for the consumer is that 15% of all of their online sales will be donated to the charitable group Cash For Kids, who have an annual Christmas Appeal. \nRetail charts are still showing a surge in sales at this time, but the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission noted an overall decrease in sales of about 30% between Black Friday 2022 and 2023. So, if this year sees another drop-off, we could be exiting the golden era of Black Friday and settling into something a bit messier and disparate for all retailers. 

Explore the evolving relevance of Black Friday in 2024 as mistrust in deals grows, and brands like Primark and Next opt out. 

Will Black Friday Become Black November?

\n\nThe Retail Excellence Ireland Awards are the biggest night of the year for Irish Retail and VisionR proudly sponsored the event, on what was the most well-attended awards show yet. The host Hector announced towards the end of the night that there were 550 attendees this year, which was a record, at the event now held in the vast ballroom of the Galmont Hotel and Spa in Galway City Centre. \n\nMyself\n and \nFarouq Ayofe\n represented VisionR, sharing a table with ambassadors from Ecco Shoes and \nTapCreative\n. There was excitement and elation at the table as one of the Ecco team, Maria Driscoll, won the Unsung Hero of the Year award, leading to us all standing up and congratulating her, jubilantly.\n\nThe award ceremony kicked off at 7pm and ended promptly at 11pm, with some great comedic set pieces from Hector Ó hEochagáin, including anecdotes on how he rushed from working in the Caribbean to be in Galway for the event, and an impromptu rave with several attendees he plucked from the audience. \nJean McCabe, the CEO at Retail Excellence was a delight, making sure to speak with as many attendees as possible in the ballroom and the foyer. Speeches were made from Fine Gael TD for Galway, Hildegard Naughton, on the difficulties the retail sector face from the recent government-announced budget. \n\n\nThe award I presented was for Jewellery Store of the Year, which went to \nStonechat Jewellers\n of Dublin 2. I handed the award to Ann Chapman, who brought her entire team with her up on stage to collect the award. The team were ecstatic and made the loudest collective cheer of the night, other than maybe the award for retailer of the year, which went to Diamond Furniture. \nWilliam Diamond was presented his award after a humorously long animated countdown on the large screen behind Hector. He very humbly accepted the award, placing a large amount of the credit to his team, who he said have overcome many challenges throughout the 25 years they’ve been in business. 
⁠\n\nThe chair of Retail Excellence Ireland commented that Diamond Furniture has consistently surprised and impressed the organization with their innovation, atmosphere, and desire to improve in all areas of their operations. \nOverall, it was an incredible evening, and we look forward to returning to the awards in 2025, where VisionR will hopefully be able to contribute positively to the occasion again. \n\n\n

VisionR at the Retail Excellence Ireland Awards 2024, celebrating Irish retail achievements and honoring standout winners in Galway.

VisionR at the Retail Excellence Ireland Awards 2024

\n\nWe are delighted to announce this new partnership. SWL Group International are committed to continuously improving technologies and operations within retail organisations, and we are thrilled for VisionR to be a part of SWL's solutions and services from this day forward. \nSWL Group have been an innovator in workforce management solutions since the early 1990’s, assisting retailers in labour modelling, budgeting, and productivity benchmarking for sectors as disparate as FMCG, Electronics, Home and Design, and Quick Service Restaurant.\nAs retail advisors ourselves, we appreciate SWL’s bespoke approach to business strategy. With this partnership, VisionR’s plug-and-play shopper insights technology will become even more accessible to global retail teams through SWL’s suite of benefits.\nVisionR’s integration with SWL’s CX Solutions will enable retailers to gain an improved understanding of their customers’ in-store experience. Real-time, actionable shopper data will empower retailers to measure shopper activity, reduce inefficiencies and drive sales.\n\nI am thrilled about our partnership with SWL Group International. Our goal from day one has been to empower retailers with the actionable insights they need to drive brick-and-mortar success. We believe that the best way for us to achieve this is by combining our cutting-edge technology with SWL's 30+ years of retail knowledge and expertise. With our combined strengths, we will ensure that enterprise retailers continue to thrive in today's competitive market. 
⁠-\n \nOran Mulvey, VisionR Co-Founder\n\nThis is a very exciting collaboration that delivers unbelievable benefits to Retailers on their greatest mystery – the ‘in-store Customer’ and their ‘shopping habits’. With VisionR’s ground-breaking technology PLUS SWL’s unrivalled knowledge of Retail and Efficiency improvement – Retail Executives will now have new insights, data and actionable knowledge to take their Enterprise performance to a whole new level.\n
\n- \nMatthew Buckley – CEO, SWL Group International Ltd\n

VisionR partners with SWL Group to enhance retail technology, offering real-time shopper insights and improved customer experiences.

VisionR partnering with SWL Group International

In the United States, there is now a trend amongst the likes of Target, Walgreens, and other grocery/pharmacy convenience chains to put items behind lock and key, using plexiglass barriers, to prevent petty and organised retail theft. \n\nAnti-theft technology has been very prominent in the retail landscape over the last few years with the Retail Technology Show in London and the National Retail Federation in the U.S.A having many dedicated stalls showcasing anti-theft companies.\n\n\nIn the United Kingdom, 2023 was the worst year for shoplifting according to the Office for National Statistics, with more than 430,000 cases recorded. This is an increase of more than a third from the year before.\n\nPaul Gerrard of the Co-op Group in a foreword to their report “Stealing with Impunity” stated\nIt doesn’t matter what data point you look at, which retail business you talk to or which retail worker you listen to, they will all describe a state of lawlessness on the UK High Street which has never been seen before; at times, many resemble the Wild West.\n\nPoint 4 in the report states that there has been diminishing confidence among retailers in the police response to crime, stating that “the British Retail Consortium found that 55% of respondents thought the police were doing a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ job in tackling and responding to the retail crime they experienced.” With statistics like this, it would not be surprising to see UK brick-and-mortar retailers adopt the US tactic of putting items behind lock and key. \n\nBut are plexiglass barriers the best form of anti-theft and how adversely are they affecting retail sales?\nI’ve spoken to many retail operations teams who’ve told me that an effective anti-theft technology would be a top priority and must-have for all brick-and-mortar retailers, if there was a perfect solution on the market. Although, when considering any type of shelf lock option, there’s an additional burden on the floor staff to now operate as personal shoppers for any number of potential customers, simultaneously. \n\nFrom personal experience, when I’ve been in supermarkets and browsed items like alcohol or shaving razorblades locked behind glass, I’ve very rarely approached a staff member to open the case for me, even if I actually am interested in purchasing the item(s). Usually, this type of security has led me to buy my whiskey from an off licence and my shaving razors from a pharmacy, rather than the supermarket. \n\nReports from US shoppers appear to back up my own personal view. Just weeks ago, Marisa Gerber in the LA Times, interviewed shoppers on locked up items. One particular shopper told Gerber that he “Had to wait 15 minutes for an employee to unlock a case” at a Target location. Amusingly, the shopper finished their interview by saying “I’ll just give Daddy Bezos my hard-earned cash”.\n\nHow drastically does theft need to be occurring for a retailer to want to consider plexiglass barriers?\nJoe Budano of Indyme, a San Diego based retail security company, stated that “Inevitably, anything that adds to “the friction to the buying process will reduce sales”, a point commonly echoed around retailers globally and especially by shopper scientist, Herb Sorensen. In his 2009 book, \nInside the Mind of the Shopper\n. Sorensen famously stated that “Shoppers are spending more than money in the store. They are also spending time and racking up angst.” \n\nJames Klug, an American retail commentator, noted in 2021, that when his local Walgreens in San Francisco installed plexiglass security, the staff reported that retail theft in that store had been reduced from an average of 50 times per day to 6 times per day. \n\n\n\nWhether or not shoppers in the United Kingdom will see more items being locked behind glass or encased in plastic protective shields really goes back to the Co-op Stealing With Impunity\n \nreport. If the law isn’t in a position to assist retailers in protecting their goods, then retailers will do whatever makes the most sense to protect it themselves. \n\nSean Poulter and Dominik Lemanski in a September 2023 Mail Online article wrote that “Generally, officers do not attend and prosecute reports of shoplifting if the value of items taken is below £200.” Because of this we are now seeing “everyday essentials such as washing powder, milk, baby formula, butter, laundry gel and coffee” being placed behind protective barriers. \n\nFrom research Lemanski and Poulter gathered, centring around London boroughs in particular, “it emerged that home furnishing store, Dunelm, is locking up its duvets and pillowcases in pin-protected cabinets” and “Iceland stores now have rows of roasting joints, Persil and other laundry products in security cases.”\n\nUntil a better method of protecting goods comes along, it seems that the lock-and-key plexiglass method may become more appealing to retailers as it is clearly the most effective anti-theft “technology”. Whether its use can be justified against overall loss of sales and decrease in shopper satisfaction is another story, and one for retailers to consider. 

Exploring if Europe retailers will adopt plexiglass barriers to combat rising theft as seen in US stores like Target and Walgreens.

In Europe, will we see more retailers putting items behind plexiglass?

I’ve been reading a lot lately about branding, and how the ultimate aim of a brand/consumer relationship should be akin to love. There are many articles advising marketers on tips to get shoppers to fall in love with their particular brand, and the tips tend to involve vague propositions like originality, consistency, social media, stand for something, and so on.  \n\nMartin Lindstrom, author of Buyology, claimed in 2011, that we may be in love with our mobile phones. This was the first real instance I read of people being in love with products. His theory began as he had conducted a series of neuro experiments, measuring brainwaves of participants as they were being shown advertisements to see which areas of the brain were being activated. \n\nHis conclusion at the time was that direct advertising does not have as large an effect on people as brands and marketeers believed. However, this led him to experiment further with neurological assessments, one of which involved measuring participants as they saw, heard, or held their mobile smart devices. \n\nThe subjects’ brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member. In short, the subjects didn’t demonstrate the classic brain-based signs of addiction. Instead, they loved their iPhones.\n\n\n\nWhile this is a genuinely fascinating study, our phones are not simply pieces of hardware with a value of $400-800 designed to simply make a phone call. Important parts of our lives exist on these phones. This is the connector to your family, friends, spouse, or the device you use to talk to potential partners on dating apps. A huge amount of business now needs to be conducted on your phone. Any time I walk into my local bank branch, the most common response I have to a query is to go on my app and figure it out there.\n\nThe portal I use to speak to my work colleagues is on my phone, and if there were a single day where I left the house without it, a huge number of potential problems could occur. I would undoubtably return home after 8 hours of work to find several messages and missed calls, updates and notifications, to tell me that I’ve missed a very busy day of events which required my attention. \n\nLindstrom is talking about an extension of ourselves in his study on how we react when we are using our phones, but I’m unsure if I ever really think about my phone’s brand. I have an iPhone and am obviously very used to the functionality (so much so, that another phone’s UX would annoy and baffle me) but I’m not an Apple lover or defender, and I don’t pay attention to their product launches, marketing, or additional products. I have an iPhone and the Air Pod headphones, and that’s it. I never browse their website and I never even argue with people who say Android is better. I assume it probably is better due to the fact it can pair with all other sorts of tech that Apple refuses to interact with. \n\nMoving the discussion away smart phones, I fixate now on brands that we may or may not love. Are people in love with Nike, Starbucks, Helly Hansen, Bang & Olufsen, Nerf Dart Guns? I think to times where I may have vehemently defended a brand, that I feel is being misunderstood by others. I remember showing up to a gathering while wearing new Ecco shoes and received some ridicule for wearing what some asserted to be ‘an old person’s shoe’. I began convincing everyone around me that they were the most comfortable shoes I’d ever worn, and in so, became quite defensive of my purchase, transforming into a battle hardened micro-influencer for Ecco. \n\nI recently got into an argument with a very close friend who mocked the fact that I had Chef ketchup in my house. He said it was basic, and a sauce for low level people. Does this kind of argument make me want to steer away from Chef, or does it make me double down and become a Chef stan? Do I now want to shout the merits of Chef from the rooftops without even understanding its merits, or having tried enough other supermarket ketchups to form an objective enough opinion?\n\nMaybe, rather than fall in love, the ultimate goal of a brand is to make its customers feel spiritually connected to it, or as if they couldn’t live without it. If you’re a retailer who sells shoes, you want your shoes to be a part of that persons every day, and when one pair eventually falls into disrepair, you want them back in your store to buy your next pair. Similarly, with apparel, cosmetics, snack foods, you can make your customer fall in love with you by being a constant in their lives. \n\nWhere things can take a darker turn is the tribalism, the likes of PRIME, Stanley Cups, Ugg Boots, or any other brand where you’re either in or you’re out. These are the brands that tend to divide, leave a bad taste in certain people’s mouths, and ultimately become dated very fast. The initial rush is remembered, and suddenly with even a year or two of time passing, those brands then suffer from their aggressive marketing and loud-mouthed champion consumers. \n\nInterestingly as well, from my research, it seems the most common reason for falling out of love with a brand is poor customer service, which can almost be seen as a sort of “breaking of the spell”. Oh, this product I love is being represented by a person who is making my life difficult and filling me with angst. Much like a breakup with an actual partner, the love starts to dissipate. \n\nI don’t truly believe you can fall in love with a brand. People fall in love with people, not objects. But I do think about the importance we attribute to certain brands and the plinth we hold them on, especially when our buying decisions are questioned, or we’re told to explain our affinity. Love is probably the wrong word… Maybe co-dependence? Becoming comfortable? Being tired of the chase and now you want to settle down with the brand you know best?\n

Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology" suggests we love our phones due to their crucial role in our lives, questioning our true attachment to brands like Nike.

Can you fall in love with a brand?

Cognitive psychologist, Herbert A. Simon, outlined a decision-making strategy back in the 1950’s, where he combined the terms satisfy and suffice, to create satisfice, in order to describe those who make decisions that will satisfy a need adequately enough. This can be a decision as simple as what type of beverage to buy in a store or as complicated as choosing a job, a school, or life partner.\n\nThis idea has been studied again and again by behavioural scientists, especially in the field of marketing and consumer trends. Another Herbert, author Herbert Sorensen, stated in his book \nInside the Mind of the Shopper\n, that “money, time, and angst are the inputs that shoppers invest” when entering a retail location. \n\n\n\nThe idea of a satisficer is a shopper who is happy to come away from a store having purchased an adequate item to facilitate a need. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have maximisers, a faction of shoppers who will generate a lot more angst while making decisions. \n\nCognitive psychologists like to think of the brain as a computer processor that tries to make decisions as quickly as possible. The brain doesn’t like being bogged down in stressful decision-making processes. In comparison to satisficers, maximisers tend to want to know all the options available to them before purchasing.\n\nSince learning about satisficers and maximisers from Barry Schwartz’s incredible book \nThe Paradox of Choice\n, I’ve realised just how much of a maximiser I tend to be, as a shopper. It might sound like a good thing to be a maximiser, but not when every visit to a shop to look at clothes, electronics, books, or whatever else results in a three-hour trip of indecisiveness. \n\nI’ll often have an idea of what I’m going to purchase that day, travel to a shopping district or centre and end up going in and out of several shops, pausing in-store with a desired item in hand, and then scrapping the whole process, and going back home on the bus with no new items and a wasted afternoon. This is the horror of being a maximiser. \n\nBarry Schwartz reasons that a maximiser cannot be certain they’ve made the right choice until they’ve assessed every option available to them.\n\nThe maximiser can’t know for sure that a particular pair of shoes is the best choice, unless they’ve visited literally every other shoe store, compared prices, and browsed every website to see if there’s a better price online. Then they might be compelled to check whether that online purchase will even be cheaper with the additional delivery costs or hidden fees. This added to the fact that there’s now a wait of 5-10 days to receive the item. \n\nIt doesn’t just need to be high priced items either. The scene from the Simpsons of Mr. Burns stuck in the middle of the aisle at the supermarket comes to mind, where he is paralyzed in a confused state, unsure whether he should buy ketchup or catsup. Adding to the humour of the scene is the fact that Mr. Burns is the richest man in Springfield and could easily just buy both options. \n\n\n\nProfessor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Stephanie Preston, stated in a BBC article from March 2021, \nDo ‘maximisers’ or ‘satisficers’ make better decisions? \nthat by trying to maximise the outcome, by predicting the use and satisfaction that will come from this product, enormous amounts of time will be lost by the maximiser in the decision making process. \n\nAdding in a time limit for the decision will only add to the anxiety and will be more likely to cause buyer’s remorse from not having the time to truly maximise. She states as well that maximisers are more likely to be depressed, overly perfectionist, and prone to regret and self-blame. Barry Schwartz, in the same article, echoes that maximisers have the tendency to do better but feel worse, and that the main drawback to satisficing is that their decisions may not necessarily be the ‘best’ outcome that gives maximum return. \n\nThe conclusion from both is to try and get the best of both worlds, by not stressing over simpler, less impactful choices like a place to go for lunch or a household appliance, but take much greater time in maximising life’s more important choices. 

Are you a Maximiser or a Satisficer? Explore how decision-making styles shape your shopping experience and daily life on our insightful blog.

When shopping, are you a Maximiser or a Satisficer?

In April 2024, London media group, The Business of Fashion, released a comprehensive case study on luxury retailers which analysed the price differences in certain staple product ranges from 2019 up until now. Their results showed that in the five-year period, a significant marking up in price had taken place. \n\n\n\nThe case study is titled \nSelling Luxury to the 1%\n and states that “The price of luxury goods has soared, as brands look to protect margins and target wealthy clients who are more insulated from economic uncertainties”.\nEx Gucci marketeer, Fabbio Becheri, argued that from what he’s seen over the past 5 years, certain brands have raised their prices by up to 52% on their most popular products, seemingly without much of a parallel to global inflation.  \nKamille Koula of Evelab Insight opined that “The price rises could have been justified if the quality of the craftsmanship remained the same over the years.” She argues that there has been no such improvement in quality of note, and that this is causing the average shopper to be drawn more towards pre-loved luxury goods. \n\nBut is this precisely what the luxury brands want?\nThis may be part of an overall reframing strategy to jettison a certain level of shopper and look for a higher spend from a smaller few, rather than seeking a larger number of sales from shoppers who are more likely to browse and contemplate for a long time before opening their wallets. \nI spoke to several store managers in luxury branded stores in the last week and asked if they noticed any significant price rises amongst their most popular product ranges and I did get an interesting response from one jewellery store in particular, carrying some of the top European jewellery brands mentioned in The Business of Fashion’s case study. \nThe response I was given by this particular manager was that the price increases were simply down to the design, rather than anything else. The implication being that the customer is paying additional costs for the years and years of expert design that have led up to the current day. \nIt’s hard to pinpoint what element of design is being spoken about, whether it’s the brainstorming from designers in head office or the crafting of the physical product itself. But this response did lead me to think that it was sort of a fancier way of saying “You are paying for the name of the brand” or a name tax for being able to show off the logo. \nThe Guardian posted an article, coincidentally on the same day as the case study, titled \nAn Amazing year for Rich People, \nwith emphasis on the fact that 141 new billionaires had been confirmed in 2024 so far. Quoting Forbes wealth editor Chase, Peterson-Withorn,\n“It’s been an amazing year for the world’s richest people, with more billionaires around the world than ever before. Even during times of financial uncertainty for many, the super-rich continue to thrive.”\nIn my last blog, I referenced author Steve Dennis’ work regarding the mid-market miasma and how the future of retail, both brick-and-mortar and online, will undoubtedly favour the ultra-high-end, and the super-low (or discount) end. His belief is that the unremarkable mid-market is the most vulnerable type of retailer at present. \nWith stores like Lidl, BJ’s Wholesale, and a variety of dollar-store chains doing exceptionally well in the United States of late (some with plans to open hundreds of new locations), it’s hard not to notice a lot of Dennis’ predictions coming to fruition. While discount chains may be seeking to open stores in every city and town they’re conceivably able to, luxury brands may want to target the flagship model, locating their stores in busy and iconic areas, to give their brands a semblance of ubiquity.\nRetail editor of the Times, Isabella Fish, only today published an article on retail insolvencies effecting 2,195 retail stores in the year until January 2024, with the likes of Ted Baker, The Body Shop, and Wilko. Isabella Fish quotes Mazars who have sited “Cautious household spending among consumers” to be the largest factor in the closure of these stores.\nLuxury brands may be deciding to collectively dig in their heels in the hope that their iconic names and long-established product lines will sell to a certain level of shopper who either don’t notice the price jumps or simply don’t care enough to notice. \n\n

Unveiling the luxury retail paradox: Dive into the shifting dynamics of pricing strategies, consumer spending, and the rise of discount and high-end markets

Do Luxury Brands Risk Alienating their ‘Aspirational’ Shoppers?

\n\n  \nSteve Dennis, in his 2020 book, \nRemarkable Retail: How to Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Digital Disruption\n, said that retail isn’t dead but boring retail is. Dennis’ experience is of working in tech innovation for large American retailers, from the late 1980’s to early 2020’s.\n\nSpeaking post-covid Pandemic, Dennis highlights in his book that even with the Ecommerce revolution that transformed two decades of retail, online sales still only account for 20% of all retail sales in North America. With 80% of overall sales still taking place in physical retail stores, he concludes that of course, retail isn’t dead, but perhaps boring retail is. \n\nBut what does Dennis mean exactly by boring?\nHe references what he believes to be the next tectonic shift in the retail world, comparable to the advent of ecommerce, and which we are all currently living through. He calls it the smartphone revolution. This has allowed most consumers to download shopping apps, compare prices, read (or watch) reviews, and order their items, all in the space of a few minutes. Scarcity no longer exists and there are retailers out there that can ensure speedy delivery processes, no matter where you are situated in the world. \n\nDennis feels that it’s the mid-market brands that are the most vulnerable in all of this. The brands that are not beating their discount competitors on price or their high-end competitors on in-store experience. He specifically puts the decline of J.Crew and Sur Le Table down to their failure to innovate, and landing too squarely in the unremarkable mid-market, causing them to lose hold of their long-established customer bases. He juxtaposes their fall with the strengthening of TJ Maxx, Lidl, BJ’s Wholesale Club, and Dollar General, all of which are profitable, with some aiming to open hundreds of additional stores across the US in the next few years.\n\nMoving more recently to the UK, on February 13th March, we’ve seen The Body Shop close all of its physical retail stores due the business falling into administration. Eva Thomas, journalist for the Retail Insight Network stated in her recent piece, The Body Shop: what went wrong, \n“Once an iconic staple of the British high street, the failure of The Body Shop is a cautionary tale for retailers.” \n\nShe also quotes, Dan Hocking, COO of advertising agency TroubleMaker, in the same article, “The Body Shop could have invested heavily in traditional media channels to drive consumers into stores, or pivoted to embrace social media and influencers, winning over a new generation and audience. In doing neither, it appealed to no one.” This statement from Hocking, almost perfectly echoes Steve Dennis’ points in \nRemarkable Retail\n. \n\n\n \nI’ve always thought of The Body Shop as an impervious high-street store. The phrase too big to fail comes to mind. Has it really been gone out of business due to Dennis’ idea of the boring mid-market retailer or were there several other key factors leading to its decline?\n\nThe above picture is from Dublin’s Grafton Street, a shopping street now seemingly filled with strong, upmarket brands, like Space NK, Doc Martens, Rituals, Canada Goose, Ted Baker, and The Lego Shop, each offering their shoppers something a bit more immersive and experiential. These stores are not just places to buy products. They are places where people can get expert advice from happy and knowledgeable staff, browse for as long as they wish, socialise, meet people, and have fun. Perhaps Is this the future of high street retail. Lines of stores where the retailing standards have been set so high that the unordinary can no longer function and are weeded out by the discerning public. \n\nIs the future of Retail at the end of both extremes?\nI’m sure if you asked a branding team, they’d tell you their ideal is for a shopper to walk into a store with a blindfold on and be able to tell you where they are by the sounds, the smells, the feel of the products on the shelves, and the overall aura of being in that specific and unique store. Steve Dennis’ points tend to favour the discount and the luxury. Are we now more likely to filter our shopping habits into the extremely low end and the extremely high end, cutting out the middle-market man?\n\nEveryone loves a bargain and trips to the likes of JYSK, IKEA, DFS, and Sports Direct, in order to purchase a large amount of quality goods at very competitive prices is appealing to everybody, no matter what your socio-economic level. Stores of this nature tend to be in retail parks, located amongst one another, and in spaces large enough to contain the vastness of their product selection as well as the vastness of their expected shopper numbers. \n\nIt's hard for me to agree entirely with the notion that boring retail is dead, but shopping is so often based on unconscious biases, and one person’s idea of boring can be very different to the next. But with the examples of store closures and administrations in the last number of years tending to be amongst Dennis’ mid-market miasma, perhaps there is more credence for brands to really optimise their omnichannel and embrace whatever consumer trends are thrown their collective direction. Dennis reverts to his phrase that markets are now more consumer led than ever, which I guess is a fancier way of saying “the customer is always right.”

Post-COVID retail shift, Body Shop closure, and the rise of immersive high-street experiences. Explore evolving consumer-led markets.

Is Boring Retail Dead? 

An enormous amount of activity takes place within retail locations, and depending on the size of a store, there could be thousands of shoppers streaming through on a given day. Until recently, most brick-and-mortar stores only had standard footfall to rely upon, along with daily sales figures from which to measure a particular store’s activity and profitability.\n\nRetailers now have a variety of options for measuring how each individual shopper has interacted in their store, from the entrance, through the aisles, and finally to the till. However, most retailers still struggle to understand to what extent a retail team’s efforts are being rewarded.\n\nExperience management company, Surveymonkey, attest that retailers typically use shopper data to affect equity, increase sales, and raise the profitability of a brand, category, or store, through shopper-centric changes to the retail environment and messaging.\n\nBut what exactly is meant by “Shopper Insights”? \nEssentially, they are the most important datapoints a retailer needs to know their shopper, increase profitability, change layout, change pricing, re-direct marketing, and generate more accurate conversion reports to assess opportunity spend. The insights most retailers are interested in are:\n\nWho is the shopper?\nWhat products are the shopper engaging with?\nWhat is in a particular shopper’s basket?\nWhen was the shopper in-store and when did they make their purchase?\nWhat leads to a sale and what leads to an abandoned basket?\n\nWhy a shopper is behaving in a certain way is a much more difficult question to answer. However, assumptions can be made from A/B testing, and measuring the impact of in-store changes. No two retail locations are the same of course, but once a store has access to the above metrics, they can then begin to examine the results of their changes. \n\n\n\n\nNo retailer will ever capture all of their opportunity spend because not every shopper is going to make a purchase. But retailers can use shopper data to boost sales from their highest spenders by catering more to them, or conversely, they can decide to raise the spend from their lowest daily spenders, by promoting items or bundles within store that these lower spenders are often seen buying at the till. \n\nShopper insights do not just stop at marketing and sales. They naturally progress into all other areas of store management. If you can analyse your shopper, they themselves will begin to tell you more about your stores. Even simple anonymized metadata can show a shopper’s movements, preferences, basket sizes, and purchase patterns. \n\nStore’s which have never been privy to these types of insights will then be able to cater to those specific shopper patterns. Ranging from shelf availability to space management, to staff rostering, retailers will know how their store works, and how it differs from sister locations. Many retailers are still getting to grips with what to do with the landslide of data available to them, but tools to manage the information are constantly being refined and being made more user-friendly. \n\nStores will always be updated, refined, and modernised, but as Herb Sorensen concludes in his book Inside the Mind of the Shopper, “Shoppers are spending more than money in the store. They are also spending their time and racking up angst. These are the three currencies of shopping”.

Uncover shopper insights for retail success! Learn to boost profitability, enhance layouts, and decode shopper behavior. Dive into data-driven strategies now!

What Can Retailers Do With Their Shopper Insights?

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⁠The VisionR team attended the annual National Retail Federation’s Big Show from January 14th-16th in the Javits Centre in lower Manhattan. Our CTO, Sales Lead, & the Founders (Shane & I) flew out from Dublin Airport with big expectations with this being our second year in a row. We took in some sights and battled the jet lag before going to the launch party at the Marriot Marquis Times Square.\n\nThis year, rather than just the one floor, two whole floors were taken up by NRF members, one themed fire and the other ice. There was generous big prizes, food, and beverages. Unfortunately, none of our team won big, but we each still won vouchers for local stores and networked with retailers. We were also able to meet television and rap star, Ice-T, who was there to meet, greet, and generally hang out. \n\nThe retail showcase began at 10am on Sunday, the Javits Centre quickly filled up with thousands of retailers from all over the world. Aside from the US, Brazil, Japan, and Mexico were all well represented, we also spoke to retailers from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, Serbia, Lithuania, Egypt, Singapore, and Ukraine. \n\nOn Sunday, we spent the majority of the day at our stall due to the amount of engagement we were receiving, what helped stop retailers in their tracks was the interactive element. Our AI Smart Camera (Scout) was set up to show passers by their shopper type by instantly analysing their movements, facial structure, body type, and clothing. This garnered a lot of attention from people curious to know how it was done exactly and how they could action these insights to drive brick-and-mortar sales.\n\nI made time to look around at other interesting technologies on display at the event, Innovation Lab alumni such as \nHypervsn\n, a company that can project 3D holographic moving-images that float in midair. It felt very Blade Runner 2049.\n\nWhile some of the larger companies you would expect to see such as \nMicrosoft\n, \nGoogle Cloud\n, & \nSAP\n were seen to be continuing their market dominance.\n\nLastly, two final shoutouts are \nNeuRetail\n and \nCooler Screens\n to be very interesting. \nNeuRetail\n provides a shopping cart that can speak to the shopper, analysing their basket, and recommending complimentary products. \nCooler Screens\n are a Chicago based in-store digital signage company, that show a shopper every product inside a cooler, clearly and concisely, saving the shopper time on needing to root around inside for items that they think or assume might be there. \n\nWhile we were very busy for the entirety of the three-day event, \nSharon Yourell Lawlor\n (who if you don’t follow for the latest in Irish retail you’re sorely missing out!) managed to wrangle up a few of the Irish attendees for a group picture. She was researching as much new tech as possible, with the hope of finding ideal solutions for the Irish market. \n\nUltimately, VisionR were able to connect with our industry in-person. The retail industry never sleeps, and the times of year that we associate with rest, like Christmas, Easter, Summer Holidays, are conversely the busiest times for people in the retail community. So, getting to speak to people in a more relaxed environment for three days, was a truly great way to start our year. \n\nEven though we were hit with a ‘Snow Bomb’ in our final two days, we were still able to visit great New York establishments like The Comedy Cellar, The Finer Diner, Gallagher’s Steak House, and our favourite Manhattan Liberal Bar, Rudy’s Bar & Grill, where a free hot dog is given with every pint ordered. We look forward to attending NRF in January 2025, where we’ll have even bigger things planned!

The VisionR team attended the annual National Retail Federation’s Big Show from January 14th-16th in the Javits Centre in lower Manhattan.

VisionR at the NRF Big Show in New York, 2024

In December 2023, Collin’s Dictionary named AI as their most notable word of the year, with its use quadrupling since 2022, and having especially exploded across social media channels. What Collin’s has found is that in 2023 in particular, AI had broken through to the mainstream in a much more powerful way, with its usage not necessarily just amongst people who work in tech circles, where traditionally the term had been seen the most. \n\nAI has now become very well established in everyday life, with the likes of Alexa, Google Maps, Shazam, and various other products and apps depending on it for functionality. Dall-E, an image generating tool, launched by Artificial Intelligence company OpenAI, now produces 2 million images per day, generated by its userbase. Dall-E has become ingrained in internet meme culture, partly due to the AI creating both intentionally and unintentionally funny images. (Eg. The prompt “Salmon swimming upstream” resulting in an image of smoked salmon fillets splashing around in a river)\n\n\n\nOpenAI, also created by Chat GPT, is an AI-powered writing assistant, which launched online in November 2022. This almost immediately led to schools and universities cracking down on students using the AI platform, fearing that students may use the service to do the main bulk of their essay writing for them. In January 2023, the New York Department of Education banned the use of Chat GPT, however only months later in June of 2023, rescinded its decision, with their chancellor David Banks saying:\n\n“The ban was put in place due to potential misuse and concerns raised by educators in our schools, however the knee-jerk fear and risk overlooked the potential of generative AI to support students and teachers, as well as the reality that our students are participating in and will work in a world where understanding generative AI is crucial”. \n\n\n\n\nAlso in the United States, an almost year-long Hollywood writer strike was huge news in 2023. The strike put a stop to several large movie and television productions. Much of this centred around studio use of AI, which was taking jobs away from writers. The conclusion of the strike was due to a compromise between the Writer’s Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Productions. \n\nA contract was agreed upon which stipulates that AI cannot be used to write or rewrite any scripts or treatments, ensures that studios will disclose if any material given to writers is AI-generated, and protects writers from having their scripts used to train AI without their say-so. The outcome was considered a big win for the WGA, but the Associated Press stated following the strike that “The threat of AI vividly cast the writers' plight as a human-versus-machine clash, with widespread implications for other industries facing a radically new kind of automation.”\n\nThere have been very serious concerns around AI in the public sphere, as it’s seen to have the power to add to the fake news epidemic that especially plagued the world in the late 2010’s. In March of this year, an image of Pope Francis wearing a puffy white jacket and garish jewellery appeared online and almost immediately went viral. The image was so convincing, that swarths of social media users spread the image around with rapidity to discuss the 86 year old Pope’s fashion choices. Some observers claimed that he looked terrible in his new apparel, while others defended him, saying that of course he should be able to wear a big warm puffy jacket, as it’s March and it’s cold, after all.\n\nAn even more concerning use of AI came in October of 2023, when the TikTok account wgmimedia, posted a video of a car on fire, created using the software, Unreal Engine 5. The video focused on a highly realistic AI-generated car, which was engulfed in flames, and placed in the middle of a real city. The first thing commenters picked up on was how if there was a serious incident taking place in a city (like a terrorist attack for example), the destruction could seem worse, causing larger panic. Some commenters concluded that if companies or rogue media nodes are able to add AI-generated CGI effects interspersed with a real environment, it could lead to huge confusion amongst the public, over whether images being shown to them online are real or fabricated.\n\n\n\nEven though AI is being discussed with relative concern in the aforementioned areas, there is still excitement about the growing potential of AI and just how much of an impact it will surely have in society and pop-culture throughout the 2030’s, 2040’s and beyond. \n\nAI has been filling up timelines across Facebook, X, Instagram, and more recently, TikTok, with filters being able to alter a person’s appearance to look younger, older, or even into an anthropomorphic version of an exotic animal. Undoubtably, we’ll see a much larger rise of interactive AI-tools as the years go by, many of which will delight the public and capture their collective imaginations. \n\nThis year especially, generative AI’s that can make a musical artist sing and perform in the style of another loosely connected musical artist have become incredibly popular. (The Beach Boys sing Hurt by Johnny Cash for example) This type of creativity has been exciting online communities and meme-lords, who can now envision a future where they could watch an entire concert of the Beatles perform Jay-Z hits on the Ed Sullivan Show or an intimate jazz club setting where Van Morrison sings his entire back catalogue in Chinese.\n\n\n\nAlex Beecroft, the managing director of Collins, said AI had undoubtably been the talking point of 2023 and stated to the BBC, “We know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology.”\n\nWhen AI-generated content has made such a serious impact in education, entertainment, and world news, it’s no surprise that AI has become the most notable word of 2023. Last year in particular, AI has permeated across all age groups, as well as being at the forefront of social media and online culture and discourse. It’s unlikely that AI’s usage will shrink in 2024, and while its use may not quadruple again, AI will still remain an evergreen topic of discussion in the global zeitgeist. 

2023's AI Surge: From Hollywood Strikes to Viral Fakes, Collins' Word of the Year Transforms Everyday Life, Education, Entertainment and Retail

Why has AI been named the “Most Notable Word of the Year”?

When retailers are asked about what they want from AI, the answer tends to be quite simple. They want to make their stores smarter, boost efficiency, and increase sales. These were the conclusions of a recent Honeywell report published in August 2023. \nOver 1,000 Retail Directors, IT and Customer Service heads of departments were surveyed across Europe, the USA, Africa, and the Middle East, and nearly 6 out of 10 participants stated that they planned to adopt AI, machine learning, and computer vision in the latter half of 2023.
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⁠Surveyed retailers agreed that they would be inclined to use new technologies like AI, if they can help them to achieve their goals. The top three reasons for implementing new technology were:
\nImproving Customer Experience (59%)\nDriving Greater Productivity (49%)\nAchieving Cost Efficiencies (44%)\nIt’s all well and good to aspire for better customer experience, staff productivity, and achieving a return on investment, but what does that look like in terms of AI and where would a retailer even start?\nAudience Profiling \nThe first thing a retailer can do is to profile their actual audience and differentiate their shopper (or browser) from the customer (or buyer). AI can now be used to segment shoppers into their respective buying groups, making it easier for retailers to understand their largest and lowest spenders by profile. \nIf a retailer examines their buying metrics, they can then choose to stock products that appeal to the already highest spenders or conversely, they can decide to act on the profiles of browsers that are high in number but not high in sales. \nThey may find that store locations in one city have completely different demographics of shoppers to a store location in another. Yet, if the stores are vending largely the same types of stock, they could be losing out on additional sales from certain key buying profiles. \nStaff Optimisation\nRetailers with a large estate of stores will also have a large number of staff to perform a number of back office and customer facing roles. Many staff will also have dual roles which take them away from the floor. \nKnowing when stores are at their busiest, will allow retailers to assign tasks effectively, in a way that doesn’t leave them short-staffed. It’s fair that retailers may currently make assumptions on the busiest times based on experience, but the ability to see in black and white, which locations are busy at which times, will ultimately save a retail time in staff rostering and task delegation. 
\n\nAd Campaign Effectiveness\nJohn Wanamaker of Macy’s Department store fame is credited with saying “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.\nThis phrase still resonates in the world of marketing today as there are enormous information gaps when companies launch a localized or national advertising campaign. They will get all sorts of metrics for their online ads, but they have no way of understanding to what extent an advertisement has been successful at attracting their targeted demographics into physical store locations. \nThe most common way to measure ad effectiveness is through sales (ie. Did our sales improve post ad campaign?) But this does not answer any other questions about whether the ad drove product engagement in the stores themselves or attracted new demographics. It also does not shed light on the potential revenue a store could have made on a given day, or how worthwhile the ad was overall to the business.\n\n\nIn-Store Ad Effectiveness\nIn-store advertisements can be overlooked; however, it is one of the most clear and obvious forms of integrating AI in a physical store. What’s the use of having an ad for a product in-store if that product has been sold out for weeks, possibly months. \nThe sparkling wine producer, Rotkäppchen-Mumm, have ingeniously opted for in-store ads that correlate with their shelf availability. The signs content syncs up with sales data to ensure a product that is nearly sold out, does not get any screen time. Oftentimes, the smartest uses of AI can be the simplest. \nThere were also concerns or barriers to the adoption of AI which came up in the Honeywell report, where retailers expressed their main reasons, they would be hesitant to introduce AI, or any new technology for that matter. The main three barriers were highlighted as:\nBudget restrictions (39%)\nDifficulty in demonstrating business value (29%)\nLack of internal expertise to maintain the technology (21%)\nWhat this seems to equate to is a fear of implementation or of stepping away from the status quo. It’s understandable that there would be a fear of misspending company money, being able to show colleagues the value of the AI technology, or being responsible for training in staff in how to utilise the new AI product.\nA solution to this is to ensure that any AI product a retailer is considering comes with things like on-boarding and support included, where the artificial intelligence is catered for or looked after by a partner company, who will deliver that data in context sensitive ways, to specific strata of company management. With a company that acts as a partner, a lot of these barriers or fears for retailers will be quashed.\nIt’s clear from the Honeywell Report that retailers are not necessarily scared of AI as a concept in and of itself, but they are wary of how to get the best out of it. Considering AI has only really come to prominence in the last decade, experienced retailers will want to know that their operation has the budget and means to take on any transformational projects. 

Based on a 2023 Honeywell survey, nearly 6 out of 10 retail directors agreed that AI would be implemented in their retail operations in the very near future.

What Do Retailers Want From AI?

Retailers that are looking to stay one step ahead, are increasingly looking to artificial intelligence (or AI) to help understand the millions of data-points readily available to them in-store. AI has been changing the world around us and retail was one of the first consumer industries to put different forms of it to use. \n In 2019, Harvard, released a white paper, positing that the 2020’s would be the decade of artificial intelligence in the retail space. It’s hard to argue against when the turn of the decade saw the launch of the all-knowing, but still prototypical Amazon Go store. But aside from Amazon, where does the rest of the retail world fit in when it comes to artificial intelligence?\nMost of the talk in retail prior to 2019 seemed to be about the fear of artificial intelligence replacing jobs in the industry, but there was a fundamental misunderstanding over how AI could really be utilized. \nSelf-Scanning checkouts were one of the the first highly visible forms of AI that affected the personal shopper experience. However, checkouts are merely robotic tills, where a customer can scan their own items, and then place them onto a weighing scale before completing their transaction. \nThis is not artificial intelligence as we truly understand it today. AI today is being used to help enhance a store’s operations, to make the lives of floor staff and management easier, and to compliment, not to replace. The most common areas where retailers would like assistance from AI tend to revolve around:\n\nCustomer Experience \n
⁠Customer experience can be enhanced by learning about those in-store. A shopper can be anyone entering a store location, but a customer is the person that actually purchases a retailer’s wares. 
⁠AI can customize a shopper’s experience and retailers can make better decisions for their store if they know who their shopper is, how long they usually browse, and what items tend to be seen together in baskets, or who is most-commonly seen at the till. 
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⁠Having access to this information can allow a retailer to capture more revenue from their highest average spenders, or even increase spending from those shopper groups who are commonly seen entering but perhaps don’t spend as much. 
⁠\nStore Layout
⁠\nStores can be limited by their shop floor and retail space. Some retailers strive to give each store uniformity, and make an experience in one location, as identical as possible to a location halfway around the world, giving their shopper base a sense of familiarity and comfort. Other retailers allow their individual store locations to make theirs their own, whilst selling a mostly identical range of items. 
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⁠Each layout, no matter the brand or location, poses different challenges, and knowing how best to use space to ease a shopper’s journey can be an ongoing project for retail teams. AI can be used to map shop journey, from the way people enter the store and which directions they walk in, to how regularly shoppers make it to certain aisles, changing rooms, or secluded sections of the store, where retailers may like to see more activity or engagement.
⁠\nInventory management
⁠\nAI can play a huge role in inventory management, from knowing precisely how many units of stock are on the shelves to how many units are available to go out on shelves. Retailers have been toying with ways to check shelf availability for years, some larger chains, with the resources to spare, have invested in object detection technologies as a way of knowing when shelves aren’t full or heat-mapping technologies to predict when aisles will get particularly busy. 
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⁠Robotics are in some cases used to scan aisles, resupply shelves, and even assist shoppers in their requests. These technologies have advanced in the previous decade enormously but are perhaps still a little too experimental and expensive for the SME retailer. 
⁠\nForecasting 
⁠\nForbes described it as when data meets AI, and used the newly coined term “omnichannel” to describe changing consumer habits, where a blend of location intelligence, transaction histories, and consumer profiles, all compiled using artificial intelligence was the most effective way to predict consumer trends and spending habits. 
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⁠AI can be used to forecast trends, especially when forms of it are used to show a retailer their shopper demographics and how they interact in-store. Measuring a shopper base while examining sales in tandem, can allow retailers to predict where the next product push needs to happen or where prices should be altered to increase revenues and capture additional spend. \n\nThese are just some of the more notable areas where artificial intelligence is being incorporated into physical retail. While tech leaders have been debating its merits for over a decade, one consensus appears to be that retailers who refrain from embracing AI, can of course continue to function as they always have, but they will constantly have to compete with other businesses in their space who are using AI to their advantage.

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