Knowing if a product is available at stores is of utmost concern for many managers at CPG companies: from merchandising to retail channel operations and from marketing to finance, many departments have their performance measured by how well revenue grows during a fiscal year. Product shortages or recurring stocking issues, however, can seriously affect revenues, especially because shoppers may switch brands because of these issues.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a reality in online shopping. Who hasn’t seen a “relevant” ad on social media right after doing a web search on a certain product? Now retail image recognition is bringing artificial intelligence to store shelves as systems for retail execution start incorporating this technology.
Now, artificial intelligence is bringing in the newest developments in retail audit system solutions with product recognition for on-shelf availability detection. What this means is that merchandisers at stores will only need to take one picture of the target product shelf and data – such as on-shelf availability and share of shelf – will be automatically extracted from it, making it possible for merchandising and distribution managers to generate instant reports and tweak their planning in order to avoid out-of-stocks.
Machine learning has recently introduced image recognition technology in mobile retail execution apps and is now transforming how merchandising audits are performed.
Retail planogram compliance is essential in ensuring brand consistency across multiple retail channels. However, achieving full compliance is always an issue due not only to outlet and local limitations, but also because of the difficulty in checking multiple locations in spread-out geographies.
Artificial intelligence has been getting a lot of attention these days but, for many industries, it is not yet clear what its practical applications are or what the benefits will be.
New advances in artificial intelligence have given rise to much-needed image recognition technology for in store audit apps, which allows quantifiable data to be extracted from pictures.
Adopting a system for merchandising is the first step in achieving the oversight necessary to effectively monitor retail channel strategies. With a system for merchandising, management can streamline keeping track of merchandise sets and resets, promotions, etc, by customizing audit forms and capturing valuable information without having to go through the cumbersome activity of transcribing paper forms.
Retail execution apps have revolutionized the way store audits were performed with the virtual elimination of paper forms and transcription that came with the advent of data collection apps for smartphones and tablets.
Real-life market insights and product shelf analysis from mobile reps delivered to you with just one camera shot by our Image Recognition technology Brand ML.
