Retail
Chronicles Monthly Newsletter | Volume 6 | Issue 7 | July 2021
CONTENTS 03 P A S S I N G
ON THE AUTHORITY
-AI’s Have Nationalities and Passports.AI is Estimated to Kill 6% of Jobs by 2021.
06 S H O E B O X
TO SIRI
"Shoebox” could help you solve your math problem using voice recognition. It was the first step into the world of voice technology.
09 M A C H I N E
LEARNING: A GATEWAY TO THE FUTURE? Most industries working with large amounts of data have recognized the value of machine learning technology. By gleaning insights from this data – often in real-time – organizations are able to work more efficiently or gain an advantage over competitors.
13 C A S H I E R L E S S
STORES: THE UPCOMING TREND IN RETAIL INDUSTRY Cashierless stores are the new disruptive concept in the retail space that provides a seamless experience to the customers and is gaining massive traction in the market.
16 T R I V I A
& PODCASTS
WRITERS Shikha | Riya Shah | Nithin | Prasoon Gupta |
DESIGN TEAM Nilesh Agarwal | Prachi Sharma | Prashant Sihag | Shivani Kunkolienkar | Sneha Patel |
EDITING TEAM Shubham Bhandari
Passing on the authority -SHIKHA
Retail Chronicles | Page 3
July, 2021
Sci-fi movies where robots are smarter and faster than human beings and also never make bad decisions they have to regret later on in life. A world where human beings are being controlled by technology that they created (I think we are there already) to the point where we ask them how we talk and walk and eat and sleep, live essentially- well, that sounds scary. Autonomous cars are the new favourite of the new generation that is almost always too sleepy to drive but still needs to reach for work on time, that is only getting lazier by the minute. AI driven personal assistants because who wants to use their phone by themselves when someone else can do it for them as if the endemic called smart phones wasn’t enough already. “Alexa! Switch on the lights. Alexa! Call my mother and talk on my behalf. Alexa! Make me happy” *Sigh* and it only gets more absurd from here. But I guess there is something these robots are doing right (of course there is a downside to everything but right now I can’t think of a better way to tackle the issue of living with least possible contact with anything and everything).
Retail Chronicles | Page 4
The retail industry has been using AI and the autonomy of technology to their advantage and it seems to be going pretty great. Extensive research and innovation on this front have been seen in the past few years. It sounds very peculiar, robots delivering your orders to you at your doorsteps, picking stuff around, walking around on roads like humans, along with humans but relevant or not, this is the future and we will have to embrace it or be deemed obsolete. Albertsons Companies is a supermarket chain that is looking into automating the last mile delivery of groceries by partnering with an automated logistics company to make a self-driving cart called Safeway. It is equipped with a camera and a speaker and is guided through the neighborhood by a remote operator. The cart can hold up to 120 pounds of groceries in four lockable containers for a contactless delivery experience. When the cart arrives at the destination, the customer receives a text to come outside and pick up their groceries. The average speed is 3 mph and powered 100% by an electric battery. Creepy but ok!
July, 2021
Walmart is also working on deploying fully autonomous trucks for delivery all the way from the distribution centre to the customer. Speaking of customer service robotics, our good old Hyundai has deployed robot called DAL-e to a showroom in Seoul. Dal-e works just as a marketing executive would. It greets the customers and helps them find the right vehicle. It also detects if the customer is wearing a mask or not and advises them to wear one if they aren’t already.
Retail Chronicles | Page 5
And then the task of the gods- inventory management. The thing is that it’s all about a sharp and quick sight paired with the vision to see the shelves all stacked up perfectly. The aspiration to build an inventory where anyone can find anything in a matter of a few seconds, or maybe minutes. Took it too far but coming back, SmartSight is a machine powered by AI of course which can identify misplaced items on shelves and notify staff when certain items are running low. The developers of SmartSight claim that it can increase inventory availability and revenue by over 95% and has a 99% top stock detection rate. The customers in store will be happy and so will be the customers waiting for their orders at home. A dream come true! Basically, we are in for a ride, obviously in self-driving vehicles while listening to automated personal assistants complaining about how human beings are so archaic. Covid-19 (tried a lot not to bring that word up) has only made the world more conducive for the furtherance of the robotic era.
July, 2021
SHOEBOX TO SIRI
RIYA SHAH MBA B Retail Chronicles | Page 6
July, 2021
Take it back to 1961. “Shoebox” could help you solve your math problem using voice recognition. The only catch being, you’d have to limit your vocabulary to those 16 words it recognizes. IBM engineer William C, Dersch created the first-ever voice recognition system named “Shoebox”. It was the first step into the world of voice technology. Given its application in retail, it was also the first step towards the transformation of the future digital commerce landscape. What is voice commerce? Comprehensively, voice commerce is a functionality that enables customers to make purchases via voice commands on their portable devices. Users tell the device what product to look for and it searches on the web. Voice assistants on smartphones and tablets are powered with voice assistants such as Siri, etc. They are facilitators of such interaction. While voice technology and voice assistants aren’t recent innovations, Retail Chronicles | Page 7
adopting it in retail space is fairly a new concept. The advent of voice commands is here to grow as supported by research that predicts the growth of digital voice assistants to reach 8 billion by 2023 from 1.5 billion in 2019. Popularity of voice commerce Technological advancements have influenced retail space greatly. In terms of popularity among customers, while voice recognition may not be the prom queen, it sure provides a tough competition. In 2018, Ipsos Connect conducted a survey showing how only 9% of smart speaker owners in UK use voice assistants to shop. Tables turned in 2019 and research by Artefact UK revealed this number to increase to 60%. Growing usage of voice enabled tech falls in line with increasing inclination to use voice assistants to make voice commerce the next major disruption for online retail. Other technological trends such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning only accelerate voice-based search adoption. July, 2021
The good and the bad
The future of voice commerce
Voice commerce has its obvious advantages such as 24/7 availability, speed of purchase and convenience. One major characteristic of voice commerce is in its ability to personalize buying experience. As it is easy to use, people tend to interact more with their devices. This lets devices gather more data from their owners which is then used to personalize customer experience. Records on customer behavior, preferences and other historical data aid companies in developing powerful products and implement market strategies to beat out competition.
The future for voice commerce involves increased capabilities around areas of seamless communication and better word detection. One can expect multiple touchpoints from smart fridge to cars accommodating voice assistants. It can become a part of brick-and-mortar shopping experience, allowing people to search for things online and in stores, just as they’d interact with a store clerk.
This leads us to the bad parts. Privacy concerns are real. Customers need privacy on the internet. Consequently, if companies want to adopt voice-commerce, they need to come up with a solution to only keep information needed to enable purchase and maximize security. Additionally, companies will have to focus on customer awareness and ease their minds upon having any security concerns.
Retail Chronicles | Page 8
What is interesting is knowing that in retail space, voice commerce is an opportunity to get ahead in the game and cater to customer needs, particularly the one craving for an experience of a whole new kind.
July, 2021
MACHINE LEARNING: A GATEWAY TO THE FUTURE?
NITHIN B- MBA D Retail Chronicles | Page 09
July, 2021
A blissful evening, you are out with your family for dinner. You are extremely delighted that you get to savor your favorite dish after a long time. The enthusiasm soon turns into disappointment when you learn your dish is available only on the menu. You settle down uncomfortably with gritted teeth muttering under your breath for the inefficiency of the restaurant people. We often experience such scenarios; why it happens so? Why can’t they plan well in advance and decide on what the customers need? Contrary to that, the out-of-stock word might be almost unheard of, especially when it comes to groceries and essentials. You might have wondered how do they manage to meet the demand uninterruptedly? In both scenarios, there is demand but not enough supply. Why does this happen? Demand is the critical indicator for every business; be it the market demand or demand for a specific good; demand drives economic growth. Enterprises invest a reasonable amount of time and money in determining the amount of demand the public has for their products and services. How much of their goods will they be able to sell at any given price? Under-estimation or Retail Chronicles | Page 10
Over-estimation of the demand pushes businesses into losses. They will lose customers if there isn't enough supply or be left with more stock, leading to piling up of the inventory. Do businesses run on blind faith that their product has good demand, in reality when it's not? The most critical business factors such as turnover, profit margins, cash flow, capital expenditure, risk assessment, mitigation plans, and capacity planning directly depend on demand. What do the companies do to tackle this demand volatility so that they keep sailing the challenging waters? Why can’t they have a forecasting system that gives the demand projections accurately? In the traditional forecasting method, A predictive analysis helps evaluate the number of goods and services consumers will probably buy in the Future. Assuming a hypothetical situation, can’t we take a sample from the population of, say, 100 numbers and forecast the demand? This works when the batch size is small or when the business is running on a small scale. Does applying the same technique helps when the businesses are into mass production? Will the results obtained be accurate?
July, 2021
Future lies in the data Today, the amount of data generated is enormous. Every day, the retail industry is getting bombarded with massive amounts of data. Does the traditional statistical method work here? Though it is not impossible, it is not practical. It requires an enormous workforce, resources to sample and analyze the data pattern, the consumer behavior, and the buying pattern. Since the consumer needs are dynamic, predicting the customer behavior can be an arduous task with the traditional methods. Generating an accurate forecast can be a daunting task. Machine learning makes it possible by allowing a system to learn independently and improve its recommendations based on data alone, without the need for extra programming. Machine learning technology quickly displays its worth because shops collect massive amounts of data. When a machine learning system is given a large amount of data to work with, it looks for patterns. It can use the patterns it discovers in the data to make better decisions in the future.
Retail Chronicles | Page 11
Machine learning helps us rationalize the plethora of elements or interactions (or simply ‘Variables’) that influence demand daily in the retail industry. For example, consider the weather forecasting data. It alone contains many variables like the temperature, humidity, moisture in the atmosphere, the probability of rain. All these can directly impact the production of the crops, supply chain, and logistics, which ultimately influence the demand and so our retail projections. Also, ML allows for recording the influence when multiple variables interact while handling a large number of variables. ML helps decide the demand based on the numerous variables taken into consideration from the previously recorded patterns. The next time, you won't have to be disappointed with the unavailability of the pizza you craved because ML is there for your rescue.
July 2021
The algorithms are designed such that the Machine learning software creates continuously improving models based solely on the data we provide, irrespective of the source. Such a system can process large data sets from several sources without the need for human intervention. It also helps fill in the gaps when data is unavailable in some cases. With the massive amount of data and multiple variables, the computing power, maintenance complexity, and technological requirements increase. No doubt that ML can bridge the gap between anticipation and reality when it comes to demand forecasting, but it doesn't mean the system is ideal and free from all the flaws. Every good thing has its drawbacks. Human brains still matter With the covid-19 crisis causing a large-scale disruption, we witnessed a significant blip in the demand and supply. The unique and unprecedented events left the retailers to go haywire. With the consumers losing the buying power, retailers had to channelize all their energy to keep their vessel intact so that it doesn't sink. The adoption of ML doesn't always guarantee us profitability when confronted with the situations like these. Human logic is still required to assess the relevance of digital brain outputs and reach final decisions based on common sense and deep topic understanding. One cannot ignore the chances of getting mislead when it involves highly sensitive models. No matter how accurate the forecasting tool, the decision-making process still resides with the Humans. Combining the best of both human and artificial intelligence can help businesses thrive in every adverse condition and prepare businesses for a better future.
Retail Chronicles | Page 12
July, 2021
CASHIERLESS STORES: THE UPCOMING TREND IN RETAIL INDUSTRY
Retail Chronicles | Page 13
PRASOON GUPTA MBA RM
July, 2021
Technology is ever-evolving, and with it, it brings more comfort to humans. There has been a continuous evolution and innovation of new tech in the Retail Industry, the Cashier-less Stores being the new leaf in that booklet. All of us know how problematic it is to stand in a queue while billing in the stores. The answer to that problem is the CashierLess Stores, where the customer can avoid all the hassle that he had to face standing in a queue for completing their billing process, picking their items, and walking out of the Stores. So the question arises how do these Cashier Less Stores Work?
of NFC Tags, Cameras, an app on the mobile, and your credit card. Before entering the store, you need to download the store's app; for example, If you want to shop at Amazon Store, you need to have an app of Amazon Go on your mobile. When you enter the store, the app will provide you with a QR Code that you need to scan at the entrance. After that, you're good to go and shop whatever you want from the store. The Cameras and sensors located all across the store keep track of all the items added by the customer in their cart. They also keep track if a particular item is placed back on their shelves. After completing your shopping, you can walk Cashier-Less Stores and How they out of the store, and the bill of the work: shopping is being charged to your Account or Credit Card. Cashier-Less Stores first made its entry with the Amazon Go Grocery Store an Why are they making a buzz? expansion to the chain of Amazon Go Grocery Stores in March 2020. Cashier- Retail World had been aware of the Less Stores work very similarly to the problem of long queues at the billing Fast tag on the Toll booths. Cashier- counters for a long time. Still, there Less Stores are expanding to the Fast wasn't a solution for that. But, now the Tag, where they work in a combination Cashier-less stores have been not only
Retail Chronicles | Page 14
July, 2021
able to solve that problem but also help Retail stores in reducing their cost as the need for staff that is required will be less and the transaction time will be a lot less in comparison to billing counters, increasing their sales leading to increase in overall revenue also. Apart from Amazon, which has opened its cashier-less stores in Britain and is planning to open in many other countries, Tesco and Sainsbury have been trying to operate similarly with their 'Scan Pay Go' and 'Smartshop' respectively. While the biggest Retail Chain Walmart is also experimenting with it.
Hurdles in the Way of Cashier-Less Stores: Cashier-Less Stores can solve many problems faced by retailers and customers, but it also brings new challenges ahead of them. In a world where out of 11 people, nearly one person have been involved in shoplifting, Cashier Less Stores doesn't sound so much enthusiastic. Cashierless Stores faces the problem not only in their operating system but there have been talks that Cashier-Less Stores are discriminatory as they require a credit card to put their bill on, people without Credit facility and who wants to use cash cannot use the store.
In India, the largest Grocery Store, Big The Road Ahead: Basket, announced in Nov 2020 that it plans to open its first Cashless Store in For now, the future for Cashier-Less Bengaluru. Stores seems bright, but it will all depend on the acceptance by the customers and how much it can reduce cost and add value for the retail stores.
Retail Chronicles | Page 15
July, 2021
Let the smartest fellow win!
TRIVIA & PODCASTS WIN AND GET FEATURED ON RETAIL LAB INSTAGRAM PAGE
Retail Chronicles | Page 16
July, 2021
TRIVIA
Answer these questions on this link click here. Each correct answer is 1 point. The person with the most points wins! and will get an opportunity to be featured on Retail Lab Instagram Page 1. Hyundai Motor Group has launched its AI powered humanoid robot __________ a nextgeneration service platform that can offer automated customer services. a. Sophia c. Erica
b. Nadine d. DAL-e
2. _________ has collaborated with a start-up Gatik to make deliveries from store to customers using fully autonomous trucks. a. Reliance c. Walmart
b. Amazon d. Alibaba
3. Which one of the following is not a voicepowered digital assistant? a. Cortana c. Alexa
b. Siri d. Kik bot
4. ________ pioneered voice ordering in 2017 by allowing customers to purchase coffee and food from their stores using a voice assistant. a. Costa Coffee c. Dunkin donuts
Retail Chronicles | Page 17
b. d.
Starbucks coffee Tim Hortons
July, 2021
5. The cashier-less store run by amazon is _________ a. Amazon Go Grocery c. Grab and Go
b. Just Walk Out d. 7-eleven
6 ____________ is the India’s first supermarket chain to go cashierless which has opened two smart-shopping stores in Hyderabad. a. c.
Dmart Big Bazar
b. HyperCity d. Easyday
7. ___________ technique allows for predicting the amount of products/services to be purchased during a defined period. a. Machine Learning c. Artificial Intelligence
b. Deep Learning d.None of the above
8. The most appropriate machine learning approach which can be used for demand forecasting is _______ a. c.
ARIMA XGBoost
Retail Chronicles | Page 18
b. d.
Linear Regression All of the above
July, 2021
PODCASTS
Retail Chronicles | Page 19
Cashier Less stores Prasoon Gupta
Shoebox to Siri -Riya Shah
Machine Learning :A gateway to the future - Nithin
Passing on the Authority - Shikha Chauhan
July, 2021
/retaillabsimsr @Retail_Lab @Retail_Lab