When the term innovation is mentioned, it can often be difficult to understand in the grocery world. What is true innovation? What are just nice new developments?
When you look at the world of technology in grocery, there has been some massive innovation made in recent years. The good news is that a lot of this innovation is available and accessible to AWG member retailers. And the improvements can help from everything from POS to out of stocks to how people shop your store. Let’s take a peek at some of the exciting developments coming down.
TOUCHLESS SHOPPING
In the COVID-19 crisis world we now live in and beyond, customers will be looking for ways where they can limit the amount of touch points they have during their shopping trip. Scan and go technology is here and it’s being used by a number of major retailers, but also some of your fellow AWG member retailers.
Think about the pressure points during the COVID-19 situation – waiting in line, worries about social distancing, waiting for cashiers. All of those can be solved with scan and go technology. Customers simply use your app to use their cell phone camera to scan items as they go through the store and place them in their cart. With weighted products, there is even a special scale that weighs the product and produces a QR code for customers to scan and add to their cart.
Beyond that, retailers will also have other advantages. You can market to customers as they shop based on what’s in their cart, track shopper behavior and then even send personalized offers based on their purchases. Futureproof Retail is the key partner that the Retail Business Solutions team is working with on this initiative.
THE ROBOTS ARE COMING
We get it, the prospect of robots in your store still might seem like science fiction, but rest assured that it’s a reality and a benefit to grocers. The team from Bossa Nova has developed a robot and inventory data service in conjunction with a team at Carnegie Melon University. Those bright minds now have an autonomous robot that roll up and down the aisles of your store.
So what does the robot do? It goes down each aisle and takes high resolution images that it then sends to the cloud, where it’s turned into actionable data and priorities for your employees. It’s tracking out-of-stocks and other limited quantity to let your team know where they need to put their efforts.
The robot itself does not require any employee assistance to do its job. It uses a battery of 3D sensors to monitor its surroundings to avoid customers and has a clean safety record, even with thousands of hours of use. The robot even takes itself to its “base” and then wirelessly uploads all the data while charging.
Having a robot take on some of these tedious duties has proven to be a boon for those that are using Bossa Nova already.
KNOW WHERE SHOPPERS GO
You can certainly learn plenty by watching your shoppers make their trip around the store, but who has the time to watch every shopper? But with new technology available to AWG retailers, you can gain a more accurate picture of how exactly shoppers move through your store – which can guide thousands of decisions.
Shoppermotion is mapping technology that allows retailers to understand shopper behavior in the physical store. It’s done by attaching “tokens” to carts and hand baskets that will map where each customer goes. Those tokens are monitored by sensors in the ceiling and then sent to the cloud.
What’s produced is a series of data outputs. That includes a heat map, so you can see the areas of the store where customers go the most and least, while also showing their pattern. It can also set benchmarks for return on investment of promotions and merchandising, so you can see if a section or display is getting the sales that should match up with its traffic.
The good news for retailers is that set up is done in one day and there is a valuable back end system and dashboard to see all the data.
