If the birth of e-commerce was not enough to spell the demise of the high street, COVID-19 sped that further.  Not having the opportunity to shop in retail stores was enough to deliver the endgame for many retailers and switch consumer behaviours forever.  So it's interesting to see retailers trying to fight back with technology to enhance the high street experience.  

 

This week Retail Gazette reported that Sainsbury's is looking to implement AI into self-service checkouts to "deliver personalised promotions which will be uniquely tailored to each customer”.  Meanwhile Hugo Boss is rolling out smart fitting rooms which appear to offer a technology that "displays items (and other items that may go with it) and allows customers to select different size and colour variants if required. This triggers a request to an iPad app for a store member to pick the item and take it to the nominated dressing room number."

 

I'm not sure either of these innovations will have the desired impact.  Taking Sainsbury's first; by the time a consumer gets to the till they know what they are buying.  At that point "personalised promotions" will only be relevant to the next visit – which is hardly innovative because Sainsbury's already offers me discounts on relevant products - through its Nectar app - before I get to the store.  The secondary benefit mentioned is: "harnessing the power of AI for sales analysis, estimating future store performance, colleague productivity and cash management," which I suspect is the real benefit to the supermarket, but not quite so customer friendly!

 

Hugo Boss' smart fitting rooms also seem to make sense… until you think about the actual customer experience.  I'm not sure how shoppers will react to being handed items by an assistant while standing in the dressing room in their underwear.  

 

These announcements demonstrate the current fragmented nature of retail.  The industry is trying to incorporate technology but not necessarily as part of evolving the shopper experience.  For my money retail will become much more about destination stores for trying our clothing, technology, and homeware and less about places where you actually buy stuff.  Tracking the customer journey between the online and offline worlds will then become the challenge - one for retailers to address as soon as possible. Whatever the future, clearly communicating it to customers will be critical to innovation and my colleague Ben Davies has written a fantastic article on how retailers address this.