The application of Artificial Intelligence or AI in just about any industry is extensive and can greatly benefit both the companies employing AI and their customers. With COVID-19 shifting how consumers make their purchases, from contactless payments to doing all of their shopping online, it’s no surprise that even grocery stores are integrating AI to better serve their customers. You will see how revolutionizing the way we do grocery with AI technology impacts the shopping experience after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Changing the Grocery Shopping Experience with Artificial Intelligence
Grocery shopping is a task that people either love or find tedious. While some people might love strolling down the aisles and aisles in the grocery store, some find the myriad of options overwhelming. Others absolutely hate waiting in line at check-out.
Grocery stores have their own problems with inventory and operations on top of making sure they provide the best shopping experience for their customers. Both stores and tech companies have taken these consumer and business woes and have used AI apps that can help delivery services, create a better grocery shopping experience for in-store customers, and provide smoother business operations. AI has helped create solutions that are revolutionizing the grocery shopping experience.
Grab-and-go Shopping
Amazon Go was the trailblazer behind the concept of check-out-free shopping in the United States. Stores like Alibaba’s Hema in China, Walmart in the United States, and Tesco in the United Kingdom also integrated artificial intelligence to offer the ease and convenience of facilitating smoother shopping transactions.
You can just place your items in your cart or scan the items with the store’s app on your mobile phone and have your payments directly billed through your credit card, Hillphoenix explained. As a grocery shopper at these stores, you don’t have to deal with fussing with your wallet and you can skip the long checkout lines. This option is perfect for people who just want to get their grocery shopping done as quickly as possible, just in and out of the store.
For the grocery stores, this helps lessen the load on the store staff who can focus on other on-the-floor services like customer assistance and SKU management.
Augmented Reality and a More Personalized Shopping Experience
With everyone on their smartphones, a lot of tech solutions involve the very devices that never seem to leave our hands. It is now possible to scan an item with your smartphone and access more information about that item. Not only can you easily check the product name and price, but you can learn about other customers’ ratings, their freshness, and other useful data that can help you make more informed purchasing decisions.
Stores can also find this really useful as they can update the prices of their items in real-time in one seamless system, especially if they want to match their in-store prices with their online store or vice versa or change the price of their produce, meats, and seafood-based on market rates.
With the help of AI, you can also have a more personalized shopping experience that takes into account your previous purchases in the store and even provides you with any product recommendations. Navigating the grocery store is also easier with the help of store maps that help you find the things on your grocery list. This is perfect, again, for those people who just want a quick grocery store run with no fuss.
Grocery Right to Your Front Door
If you can shop for clothes online, why can’t you do the same for your groceries? If you truly dislike going to the grocery store or you simply do not have the time, with the help of AI-powered grocery delivery, you can simply head on over online to purchase the items on your grocery shopping list and have them on your doorstep at the time you scheduled it to arrive.
The grocery stores then serve a double purpose as a fulfillment center that has employees pick out the orders for their online customers. With every business owning a website, the stores can utilize the power of their online platform to develop their web marketing to drive more sales outside of their brick-and-mortar stores.
Fresh Food
Delivering freshness is the top priority of grocery stores and sometimes it can be difficult to stay on top of all the produce and inventory. With the help of AI, stores can completely transform their systems to better optimize their products and handle the uncertainty of fresh food, said SmartBrief. The system can take data such as demand, sales, and the shelf life of the specific products and develop an organizational strategy that not only decreases food waste when unsold produce is thrown out past its sell-by date but makes fresh food in stock consistently for customers to enjoy.
Grocery Shopping in the Future
The integration of artificial intelligence in the shopping experience has truly put customer satisfaction at the forefront. People have a lot on their plates and sometimes grocery shopping is put on the back burner until the last minute. Some may be very particular about their time, some have problems with accessibility, and others need to know the availability of their desired food. With these companies addressing the problems customers have and are looking for ways to truly improve their customers’ shopping experience, we are entering this new era of grocery shopping.
