'Consumers Have Spoken Through the Pandemic': Critical Retail Tech Investments Separating Winners from Laggards

The rise in contactless fulfillment is nothing new to any retailer that’s sold, well, anything in the last six months. But while taping a paper sign to your door might have cut it during the early days of the pandemic, shoppers are getting savvier and more demanding, and retailers need to follow suit. In “Evolving Shopper Trends: Where Do We Go From Here?,” a webinar hosted by RIS News and presented in partnership with Arm Treasure Data, we dug into the retailers that are currently triumphing during the health crisis. Crucially, this group comprises the sellers leveraging tech and first-party data to go beyond the stage of “keeping the lights on” and into converting their influx of new shoppers into loyal customers. An edited transcript with the slides, including new research data, are below. Tim Denman: Welcome, everyone, to “Evolving Shopper Trends: Where Do We Go From Here?," which is hosted by RIS News and presented in partnership with Arm Treasure Data. I am Tim Denman, editor-in-chief of RIS, and I thank you for joining us today. Shopper habits and trends are constantly evolving. That's nothing new. And as they say, the one constant in retail is that it's always in flux. Well, hold on to your hats because I'm going to say something that's super shocking: 2020 has been really different. While retailers are used to the slow and constant evolution of shopper behavior, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic altered customer behavior seemingly overnight. At the start of the year, American shoppers were continuing on the path they have been on for the past few years. They were increasing their e-commerce browsing and spending, and continuing to shop primarily in the store. And when it came to the store, it was all about a data-driven, tech-fueled experimental environment. But as the virus broke in March and many states went into lockdown mode, consumer behavior shifted on a dime. First there was a rush on stores for everything from paper towels, to hand soap, to canned goods. Then there was that massive spike in e-comm volume, a volume even industry stalwarts like Amazon weren't able to keep up with at the start. And let's not forget the store: Store shelves were bare in many parts of the country. Consumers had to wait in line just to enter and retailers were scrambling to deploy safety measures and ensure that they could stay open. The store experience the industry had been building for the past few years was turned on its head. During those early days of the outbreak, a quality store experience was just finding a store that was open and well-stocked. Now, thankfully, those early days of the pandemic are behind us and the industry has settled into "this new normal." But that normal is vastly different from what it was just a calendar year ago. With me today, to explore the current state of the customer experience and the shopper trends that will define the foreseeable future is Thomas Kurian from Arm Treasure Data. Thomas, or as everyone calls him, TK, joined Arm Treasure Data earlier this year from Treasure Data's IoT business and he has the industry solutions. He's responsible for helping the company gain market share in multiple industries, and prior to joining the company in 2017, he worked for Zebra Technologies where he helped the company grow its revenue by 300% in five years. He led teams that helped customers like Amazon, FedEx, and Target develop digital transformation initiatives. TK, thanks for taking some time to talk with us today. Thomas Kurian: Thank you, Tim. I'm excited to be here at this RIS event. I'm looking forward to it. Denman: As am I. Now, many of the data point and trends we'll be discussing today were recently covered in depth in RIS' Changing Shopper Habits and the New Customer Experience special report, which Arm Treasure Data was a title sponsor. We published this report in late July well after the initial COVID-19-induced shakeup was over, and it explores the current state of the customer experience and provides insight into where the industry could be headed next. It's presented through a number of retailer examples, some of which we'll examine here today. Instead of going over the report point-by-point, TK and myself are going to focus on a few key themes and explore them in a conversational format. No conversation about the current state of the customer experience could be complete without discussing safety first. Retailers have done an admirable job across the country, equipping their employees with the personal protection equipment they need, and instituting procedures designed to meet local social-distancing mandates. As we know, masks, hand sanitizer, one-way aisles, occupancy limits, and a whole bunch of other stuff have all become vital pieces of the shopping experience. But finding a way to provide this safe environment while still offering customers an easy and convenient way to shop, now that's the trick. Customers are willing to pay a little extra for this convenience. More than half of shoppers report they will pay extra for a convenience, but nowadays convenient also has to mean safe, right. So a significant percentage of customers have always been willing to pay more for convenience, but now it is safe convenience shoppers are after. So TK, how can retailers best provide this safe, convenient environment, and how could technology help? Kurian: Thanks, Tim. As you stated earlier, the critical importance of health-related safety for shoppers over price and experience is one of the great changes that has happened this year. For the near future, I believe it is imperative for the store to extend and come to the consumer. Buy-online-pickup-curbside or in-store are essential examples of that. But beyond that, customers still do need to come into the store, and the visit has to be optimized for safety and his or her time. The mobile app is the retailer's new loyalty program. There are lots of additional self-serve services that can be provided within the retail mobile app. The top three that are my favorite: First, providing inventory visibility to the customer through the mobile app. Customers absolutely need to know with high levels of certainty that the inventory is in the store, through their mobile app, and ideally be able to reserve it online before they start their journey from home. Secondly, in the mobile app, retailers must provide them the most accurate and fastest info for all the items in the cart, or wish list, or what have you through technology. This can be done very easily. The technology is available, and in some cases, it has been deployed by the larger retailers. Lastly, scan-and-go in the mobile app, or cashierless checkout like Amazon Go, is necessary. I noticed that Giant Eagle today just announced that they will be rolling out cashierless checkout in their stores. All these three things will improve the potential safety of the consumer in the store, and also increase the flow of customers through the customers, and reduce the lines or the queues outside, and the cost of queue busting and monitoring that are involved currently. Denman: That's great insight there. And obviously, with all this technology and all this data that we're collecting from customers, how does that all fit into all these new privacy initiatives that are coming down the pipe? These new regulations, how will this affect customer behavior and retailer's ability to really leverage data? Kurian: That's a critical question. California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, is the law for our state, and therefore, compliance is absolutely essential in California. The other states are in line and going to catch up very soon. Consent to use customer data in return of benefits or perceived benefits is necessary for the retailer and that consent needs to be persistent. First-party data is data that is collected directly and stored by companies, including retailers, about their customers. With first-party data, retailers have a prior relationship, and permission, to be able to use this data for benefits. This data includes name, addresses, emails, phone numbers, websites, and mobile app interaction, in-store integration interactions, information about product purchase. And they are able to use this data to engage with the customer better and serve the customer better with permission. I personally work for a company that is in the customer data business and CDPs are essential technology to unify that first-party data and make it usable and highly effective from a marketing perspective and other functions. Denman: Now, do you think any of these regulations and new measures that have to be put into place because of the data, will they have any effect on this engaged, memorable, data-powered shopping experience that we've been promoting for a few years now, and that's been top-of-mind for retailers? Kurian: Yes. I mean, in the sense that data-driven, memorable shopping experience is happening. They're typically known as some level of clienteling or some personalization, both in the digital and in the physical store channel. Clienteling or personalization is still best delivered by a person or an associate. Apple Store routinely delivers a great experience to customers and shoppers in scale. Sears, for example, did not. Whether it be virtual or in person, it is easier to deliver effective experiences with tools that drive data to the associates when he or she is in front of the customer. So this means that they have to be able to access fresh, persistent customer data in real time, whenever he or she is delivering the experience one-to-one to the customer. And this can be in the virtual channel. There is a lot of companies now starting to deliver virtual clienteling by a person as opposed to a bot in the mobile app. And this is getting a lot of traction with some of the brands. So data is very important. If the associates are not empowered by data, it will be challenging to empower them to deliver a memorable experience. Denman: All this stuff that you just mentioned, clienteling, things like that, it's all based around this idea of mobility in apps and getting the enterprise in your hands. As we mentioned, there has been a significant rise in the number of people utilizing contactless payment, which is another thing you need your mobile device for. And as you can see on this slide, 35% of shoppers report using contactless payment more often since the outbreak of the pandemic. And what I think is even more interesting is that 74% say they will continue to use it post-pandemic, whenever that finally arrives. So obviously, with three-quarters of consumers saying they will continue to use contactless payments after COVID-19, what other technology do you think is going to have the stickiness to remain relevant once the pandemic is in our rear-view? Kurian: On one vector on the payment-specific scenario, I think beyond contactless payment, some things are already available. One, scan-and-go is available in a lot of retailers' mobile app. The second thing is what I alluded to earlier, which is cashier-free checkout, which eliminates the need to even scan items. Grab an item, grab a set of items, and just leave. That makes it a very different experience and technology is empowering that very significantly. On the second vector is, I mean, curbside pickup is here, and sticky, and will remain, and it will be one of the major successes and transformations in retail. There are three other things that I'm fairly bullish about. Again, they are emerging currently, but I would expect they would be mainstream in the near future. The first is virtual clienteling, as I alluded to earlier. Secondly, retail is coming increasingly into the content business. Lululemon has a YouTube channel already and recently purchased Mirror, which is an attractive content service to drive in-home exercising. Amazon, of course, has Prime Video already. And Walmart is a leading candidate to try and buy TikTok. So retailers entering the content business is going to be a very significant trend driven by technology. Third one is healthcare. Retailers delivering healthcare in a retail environment is beginning to happen. CVS clinics are broadly available and CVS has acquired Aetna, which is a health insurance. And Walgreens and Walmart have already started having clinics and now are delivering healthcare in limited fashion right now. I'm very bullish about these three things. Virtual clienteling, retailers in the content business, and retailers delivering healthcare. Denman:A lot of those really play to the new environment, especially the idea of virtual clienteling, and obviously, healthcare. And the other things we talked about earlier, contactless payment, fulfillment on the curb, those kinds of things. Now, all these technologies, especially the contactless, the fulfillment, the delivery, that retailers have been deploying in earnest over the past few months. It's a really interesting challenge because how can retailers stay agile, invest in these vital, need-it-now technologies while simultaneously doing all the things they need to do to keep the lights on? Kurian: Yeah. I would classify retailers into two segments essentially, currently. Two-thirds of the retailers have been, from a physical store perspective, closed for most of the year. And one-third have been very fortunate to stay open and have excelled at deploying technology very quickly. This is also because they spent years learning, testing, probing, investing, and especially investing in change management to train their associates to transition so quickly. So for the retailers that are beginning to open right now, the new bar is now very high to stay competitive in the physical scope this time. They absolutely need to invest in new technology to be on-par with the retailers that have been open and scaled up their services very significantly. I feel that this will be challenging, but the opportunity exists for them. The technologies are proven, they're less riskier. They do need to change their culture, perhaps, and train their associates to deliver the services at scale. But this is going to be a test for the retailers that are just emerging from the shutdown to open physical stores. Denman: Right. I mean, a lot of the country wasn't open, and now you could lean on the learnings of the big boys, the essentials, as everyone gets open up again. One thing that has been going on since March is this idea of this gigantic boom in e-comm. And you could see some stats we have on the screen here from late spring that we had in the report. Just in a word, the growth has just been gigantic. I pulled some numbers this week, I wanted to see how we're doing so far, and I found some numbers for the first six months of the year. Consumers have spent $347 billion online with U.S. retailers, which is a 30% bump from the same period last year. Comparatively, e-comm sales in the first half of 2019 grew around 13% year-over-year. So not only are we seeing huge growth, we're seeing percentage growth-wise, it's unprecedented. Will it stick around? Probably pull back a little bit, but we're not going to see 30% year-over-year, year in, year out. But a lot of these online shoppers are going to stay online shoppers. And online shopping represents around 19 to 20% of total retail sales so far for 2020, so I mean, just, you can't wrap your mind around how much money is being spent on e-comm right now. TK, this massive increase in e-comm, has it been profitable, and do you see it as being sustainable? Kurian: The answer is gray, and not black and white, in my opinion. E-commerce with curbside and in-store pickup can be profitable, or is profitable, as the retailer is not paying for the transportation fee and the delivery fee to the consumer's house. Secondly, they are leveraging their store footprints. And retailers who have excessive geographic coverage, within 10 miles of 60, 70, 80, 90% of the population, are going to do very well. E-commerce with delivery to home can be sustainable and profitable with membership, but how many retailers will they be paying membership fees or subscription fees to? Amazon, Costco, Walmart. There is going to be a limit, and that envelope is going to close fairly quickly. At the same time, one of the other big changes that has happened is that the consumer has been at home and not mobile, so it is very easy to deliver to the home when the consumer is at home for 24 hours as opposed to 8 hours or 10 hours or 12 hours. So I'm not as bullish about delivery to the home as consumers become more mobile and things start opening out. And secondly, the delivery costs, there isn't technology to substantially lower and automate the delivery costs yet. And transportation is sensitive to energy prices. So very bullish about what's happening in the store. And so as with the warehouse, or e-commerce, I'm not as bullish about delivery. Denman: Got you. We did get a question in about the data I read off. It was U.S. data. So U.S. retail, $347 billion up 30% year-over-year, and 19% of total sales in 2020 for the first two quarters, those are U.S. numbers. All these increases in spending, both online and also in the store, has shone a light on retailers' demand planning capabilities. And quite frankly, a lot of it hasn't been so pretty. And obviously, there was a major rush on staples in the spring that threw a wrench into retailers' demand planning. But while stores are in stock again and e-comm's wait times are back to a respectable timetable, there is plenty of work to do on the backend to ensure retailers are prepared to meet demands should there be another unforeseen spike. BJ's, for example, saw a digital-enabled sales increase over three times the first part of the year. And the retailer was quick to pivot to leverage its omni-fulfillment methods to take some of the pressure off of its e-comm team and utilize its in-store infrastructure. But BJ’s also invested in new demand planning and fulfillment software to keep physical and virtual shelves filled, and customer orders continue to be fulfilled. TK, we know we have to give retailers a little leeway given this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, but the pandemic did highlight some shortcomings in a retailer's ability to successfully predict demand. Why were retailers unable to see this massive spike coming? Kurian: Yeah. Retailers, in general, have done extremely well, and this is an issue that consumers have been somewhat frustrated about. I mean, we still operate in a world that traditional demand planning and forecasting are the norm, and these techniques were developed in the 1980s or even earlier. In historic performance, meaning what I did last year or last quarter, was the best predictor for the future demand. And these approaches do not really work in highly volatile environments. Changing customer preferences, rapid new introduction of products, e-commerce, climate change, and now a pandemic. So it's something that needs to be repaired by all retailers. They need to move even further, in my opinion, beyond just correcting demand forecasting or demand sensing, to also provide real-time inventory visibility to customers in their mobile app. I feel this is a challenge; it's a chunky challenge that all retailers will be investing in very significantly. Denman: I have another question I jotted down before the webinar about challenges that retailers face with demand planning before the pandemic, and kind of how those challenges have evolved during the pandemic and after the pandemic. I feel like you answered that, but is there any more comments you'd like to add about the challenges they faced before and how those challenges have evolved? Kurian: Yeah. I think long-term planning frameworks have changed from what used to be 1 to 3 years for retailers to 4 weeks now. That's a critical change. And I think the Target CEO has publicly stated this. To help retailers move and transition, they need to have very accurate hyper-localized, meaning at each store-level, daily demand forecasts using real-time demand sensing from, again, real-time customer data, intent data, inventory status across the supply chain, point of sale data, and other arbitrary signals like weather, safety, approximations of what's happening in the local communities. Together with those signals, they need to develop a new set of algorithms to transform their visibility into daily forecasts, and if possible, daily forecasts at each eye-level and item level to serve the customer and eliminate this frustration going forward. Denman: Right. I mean, we're talking in general about predicting demands and things like that, but I think it'd be kind of interesting to look at actually where the demand was and is going in terms of particular product segments. During the panic stage, obviously, it was all about sanitizing products, toilet paper, canned goods. But now that that panic has settled down, then the demand shifted to prepared meals and frozen foods and cosmetics, specifically skincare. And now we're seeing those categories die down a little bit. And on the rise, it's seafood and baking goods and mixers for alcohol, which obviously in the summertime, sitting in the backyard, those are necessary. Does this data sit in line with what you're seeing, TK? Is there any insight that you can provide of where you think demand might be headed as we roll into recovery? Kurian: Yeah. This is in line with what we are seeing. Things are up a month, and those same things are down the next month, and there is a new category that is of interest. I alluded to earlier that horizons have changed for retailers and probably for consumers to 4 weeks out, and therefore, planning is more consistent with what's happening from a real-time perspective and triggers that they are receiving. Either health triggers or maybe outreach or marketing triggers. But this is very different to what has happened before. And there is a lot of things that's happening together. There is de-urbanization, the movement of shoppers from cities to suburbs. There is remote and digital education of children, and this has driven the back-to-school shopping results. And also, working from home and persistent [uncertainty] to personal health, unpredictable regulatory policies, etc., etc. So there is a lot happening here. It is very challenging to predict further out beyond 4 weeks, in my opinion. But it is possible with demand sensing and all those real-time signals to predict more accurately on a daily basis and within that 4-week timeframe. Denman: Right. And one thing that we've seen over the last couple years is CG is getting into the retail space going direct-to-consumer with greater frequency. And now with the pandemic, I think we're seeing traditional, staples companies trying to move into e-commerce a little bit more aggressively than the timeframe they had set. What effect do you think that's going to have on the market or is having on the market? Kurian: Yeah. That's a great observation. A lot of our CPG customers are investing in direct-to-consumer initiatives around e-commerce. There are two primary drivers. I mean, one is this need to build direct relationships with end customers and get more of that permission-driven, first-party consumer data, so that they can execute against because this technology called cookies that tracks customers across the internet is disappearing in 2022. So this absolute land grab for first-party data is happening. And very important, with CPG companies who are very good at marketing to a million people, and they're fairly challenged to market to one person, so they need to close the gap here. The second is there is a trend towards retailers who were their partners. Retailers are moving aggressively into private-label brands. I believe Costco generates probably over a quarter, if not a third, of their revenues from the Kirkland brand. Amazon Basics is up and running and climbing very fast. The CPG partnerships with the retailers are fraying and getting more challenging, so CPG companies are experimenting going direct. There is a couple that have succeeded really well. I mean, one specifically is Nike. But the vast majority is just starting out their experimenting with e-commerce and also experimenting with physical stores. Denman: I have a little bit more on shopper spending habits here on this next slide. The data on this slide is actually from a recent survey that was completed by Arm Treasure Data. There is a lot of great stuff here, and obviously as you can expect, e-comm is up big, food delivery is up big, buying in bulk is up big. One tidbit that sticks out to me is the loyalty piece. 32% report they're more loyal than before, 48% of shoppers said they're just as loyal, and 19% said they're less loyal. I think we're seeing a major shift in loyalty right now. Obviously there is a big group of retailers that were in trouble before the pandemic hit and they've been forced to close, they weren't able to survive. Even some of the biggest names in the industry have announced some store closures. So loyal customers of these retailers have been forced to begin to explore other shopping options. And this is a huge opportunity for these "new retailers" to capture these shoppers and build meaningful, long-term relationships. Shoppers, they do get into a routine, and they shop where they shop. And once that routine is broken, now there is an opportunity for retailers to provide shoppers what they're looking for, which hasn't really fundamentally changed since the founding of retail. It's all about a well-stocked, affordable, safe, convenient place to purchase things. I mean, that's the basis of retail, and I think we're really heading back to its core tenets now. Now, TK, did anything really stick out to you from this Arm Treasure Data study? The increase in reliance on small business is certainly nice to see considering what is happening on the main street right now. Can you talk a little bit about that? It seems like the little guys are getting beat up, but there is certainly a group of shoppers that are actively seeking them out. Kurian: Yeah. I'm really excited about this trend of new entrepreneurship in retail. It's driven around new secular trends that are emerging around health and wellness and things like that, in my opinion. For example, I live in a city with over 100,000 people, and for the first time, we have a real butcher shop that sources local, farm-fed protein. And the founders are two passionate women entrepreneurs. Specifically around this trend, consumers are increasingly preferring local sourced food, sustainable choices, maybe more vegan products, etc., etc. There are lots of new opportunities for new, smaller retail entrepreneurs to differentiate around these lines and grab that loyalty land grab that is happening, as you alluded to earlier. So I feel this is exciting. Retail is transforming. At the same time, there's a lot of new trends that are emerging where the new entrepreneurs are executing and getting success in. Denman: Getting back to the idea of not only going local, we saw this huge surge in e-comm, and fulfillment, once again, it brought to the forefront. The good news for retailers is that the foundational work for omnichannel fulfillment, they've been working on that for years, and many retailers have already dipped their toe into the idea of omnichannel fulfillment, but the pandemic just kind of forced them to dive right into the deep end. And you can see on this slide, retailers are putting significant investment in omni-fulfillment. Home delivery, buy-online-pickup-in-store, and fueling a lot of that, this idea of contactless payment. We mentioned this a few times already, and I think we have a question from the audience that we'll get to on this, curbside is on the rise across the industry. Companies like Sam's Club and Walmart, they've kind of filled their coffers during the pandemic. They were deemed essential, and they were able to operate undisturbed, and they had the technical firepower to adjust on the fly to meet these changing customer concerns. In addition, they have greatly benefited from the upheaval of the mom-and-pop market, which we talked about, which helped grow sales even further. With these large companies, they're not just taking the money and putting it in the bank, they're reinvesting these funds into vital services like buy-online-pickup-at-curb, which we discussed, we think is going to remain vital in the long-term. Now, obviously we've seen a massive uptick in curbside, especially at the start of the pandemic, and all signs point to this service sticking around. What do retailers need to do to fully integrate the offering into their tech stack? Instead of a lot of places, you'll see it's kind of almost like packed out on the side, there is a paper sign on the door with directions. But what do they need to do to really integrate this service into their core offerings? Kurian: Yeah. I think, I mean, you alluded to the history of curbside delivery. Target was the first retailer to offer curbside delivery in 2014. Together with a Silicon Valley startup called, ironically, Curbside, that has disappeared now. This is an entirely real-time and mobile experience for the customer today in the sense the customer places the order, more often than not, in the retailer's mobile app, lets the retailer know within the mobile app that they are leaving home, and often, lets the retailer know again when they arrive and park in the curbside area and they are ready for delivery. So from our perspective, we offer this is a solution with our customer data platform. It is one choice that they can take. We, together with our customer data platform, we offer a feature called InStore SDK, which is a resource software that slides into the retailer's mobile app to track the location of the customer, confirm when the customer has parked in the geo-fence area, curbside, with a trigger, and we are integrated to retail workflow and task management systems to instantiate the task to the associates to deliver the order. And also empower the associates with fresh customer data to help that one-to-one interaction with the customer in that moment. There are a couple of other important things that need to happen here from a perspective. One, curbside delivery, or in-store delivery, should be treated as omnichannel revenue. And this is one of the things that the retailers who are doing this well have done this. It might originate from an e-commerce session, but it is attributed to the store where the fulfillment happens. And the investment in the physical store, and the community around it, can be sustained. So that's a critical change. Second is change management. Investment is crucial. Target, I mean, not just Target, but Sam's Club and Home Depot, etc. The associates need to be equipped with technology and need to be trained to use it and to deliver the service. And in that scenario, not just be data-driven, but also bring the human spirit and shops into the fulfillment process. This is the future of retailing. It is a very critical element and the consumers want it. The consumers have spoken through the pandemic. All retailers can do better on this. We have a solution, there are others who have different solutions. But we are excited about it. Denman: Thank you, TK. That actually concludes the recap of the themes of the report. We do have about 10 minutes left in the webinar. We have a bunch of questions from the audience that we're going to get to now. If you have any other questions, feel free to send them in. If we don't get to them in time, we'll definitely follow up with you via email. We have a question here that's just following up with what we were talking about fulfillment: “How are growing buy-online-pickup-in-store and contactless payment changing employee roles? The mix of store staffing and the skillsets associates will need to bring to the table. Which retailers are handling these staffing shifts well and not so well?" I'll hand off the first part of that question to TK, but I can definitely speak to the second part about which retailers are handling these staffing concerns well. I hosted a webinar with AutoZone. They have a new workforce management solution at about, I think all of their stores, they have over 6,000, allowing for staff to swap shifts, schedule, see all that HR stuff, communicate with each other. I could point to them as definitely being a leader in that space. Obviously like TK has mentioned, Target. Home Depot is pretty big in that space as well. But in terms of the idea of the changing roles and the mix of store staffing, TK, what skillsets do you think associates will need now in order to survive and thrive in retail? Kurian: Yeah. I mean, firstly, this is a question from a former professor of mine that I just met after 28 years, and I am happy to answer this question. The role of the associate is changing rapidly. The warehouse function and the skillsets of the warehouse have gone from the back of the store, or the distribution center, to the front of the store. What used to happen, or is still happening in the front of the store like cashiers, that is in the process of transforming if not changing. The third is that it has been, in my opinion, fairly challenging to get great customer service on a one-to-one basis with a large set of retailers over the last two decades or so. And the classic example, again, I'm going to talk about is the comparison between Apple Store where when I come into an Apple Store, you have a bunch of associates running to serve me. When I used to go to the Sears stores, I can't find anyone to help me. So this is being corrected. The future is the Apple Store format. Clienteling: they need to be skilled and equipped with data to deliver memorable experiences. Especially with the return of the shopper into the store. Loyalty is up for grabs, service is up for grabs, and the reskilling has to happen where the associate can deliver a data-driven service on a one-to-one basis to a customer in the store. Denman: Well said. We have a question about AI, which we haven't really spoken about. But obviously, TK, as a data man, you probably have a strong opinion on AI. The question here is: "How has data collection and the pandemic shopping habit impacted AI-related shopper assisting technology?" Kurian: We can classify Amazon Go, that whole entire store format, as an AI-driven execution and customer experience. So I feel that is successful, but it is not delivered at scale, and profitability is not proven. So that is on one vector. There's certainly examples of interaction. Like, again, from Amazon Alexa, has a lot of AI in it and can deliver an interactive shopping experience to the customer. So I think there are episodic experiences on retailers using AI around the cashierless format and around extending the store to the customer, but it, in my opinion, there is a lot more to do and a lot more to accomplish with AI. And I think it is further out than what is very imminent in these two areas. Denman: Yeah. Thank you, sir. Well said. We're out of time at this moment. We thank everyone for listening. Definitely thank TK for joining us. It was a great, lively conversation. And, obviously, a big thank you to Arm Treasure Data for sponsoring this webinar and the associated report.

Retail Minute: Retail sales numbers don’t tell the full story

A balance of in-store and e-commerce improvements is key to happier customers

Why U.S. retail will never be as advanced as China and 9 other myths of retail design debunked at EuroShop 2023

You May Also Like

New Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan Takes the Reins Earlier Than Expected

Walmart Further Elevates Its Fulfillment Centers With Agile Packaging Tech