What Does AI Mean in the Retail Industry?

By Jamie Gutkin | February 2, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a trendy term, promising innovation and efficiency across industries. In the retail space, where consumer behavior, market trends, and e-commerce are constantly changing, the discussion around AI is more relevant than ever.

Visual merchandisers are eager to embrace the latest technology but often encounter AI solutions primarily tailored for online platforms. This leaves them scrambling on how to effectively leverage AI in physical stores.

At One Door, this isn’t a new conversation. For over a decade, we have seamlessly integrated the digital and in-store realms. Here are two straightforward ways AI works in physical stores:

Transparency and Feedback

Ensuring store compliance poses an ongoing challenge for retailers. Headquarters and visual merchandising teams struggle with time and resources to monitor and provide feedback for every store, especially without a physical manager in each location.

Manually sifting through hundreds or thousands of store photos for display verification is almost impossible. (Trust us, we’ve talked to some merchandising teams who have tried.)

At One Door, we developed Image IQ, a revolutionary AI-driven solution for visual merchandisers. It monitors compliance, improves communication, and increases in-store engagement with perfectly executed displays.

Think of Image IQ as your friendly compliance monitor and in-store assistant.

It showcases proper store execution instantly and corrects any merchandising discrepancies. Image IQ offers immediate feedback on display completeness and correctness. If an issue occurs, it precisely highlights the issue for store associates during execution, so nothing becomes a lagging issue.

Image IQ analyzes in-store visual merchandising, reduces compliance costs, and proves immediate display compliance boosts sales. Image IQ guides store associates on how to set up correct displays and flag any issues.

Bottom-Line Impact and Efficiency

Creating localized planograms traditionally involves a manual, time-consuming process. Visual merchandisers often receive last-minute updates, which complicates the application of changes to numerous plans that are already in process. Customizing store merchandising based on size, layout, and region is crucial but time-intensive.

AI, like One Door’s Store Assistant, streamlines planning to execution processes. It equips visual merchandisers with the right information and intuitive guides.

Store Assistant acts as an assistant in your pocket, providing clear step-by-step guidance to store associates. It saves 10-20% of labor hours per week. This proves the efficacy of communication efforts and alleviates the burden of tailoring communications for each store.

At One Door, we embraced AI before it became trendy. As the discourse on AI in retail evolves, integrating AI into physical stores is not just a trend. It’s a necessary strategic move to stay ahead in a competitive market.

To see how you can bring AI to your physical store, request a demo of One Door.