What’s New or Coming Soon to Retail? NRF 2024 Was A Lot of AI

Every January, tens of thousands of retailers and vendors descend upon New York City to gather for what the National Retail Federation calls its “Big Show.” It is aptly named, as it is a massive gathering that brings nearly every large, medium, and start-up sized company that supports retail to one place. The show is simply the best place to see what is available for retailers to use to help support and grow their business. Arguably, it is too big to take it all in during just three days. But it is a tremendous opportunity to meet and engage with known and new colleagues alike. The Big Show also brings different speakers to provide insights into the industry and well as a sharing of best (or at least) common practices that have proven successful for companies. It has always been a tremendous experience.

I attended the NRF Big Show again this year, making it at least the sixth time I have been a part of this event. The last few post-pandemic years have been a little unusual. Crowds were lighter, some vendors opted to miss the event, or at least send smaller contingencies to support. This year felt like the first year it was back to normal and was fully attended. Every major vendor was there in full force. Retailers came back and were engaged. It was a great thing to see, even if it does mean we kept looking for hand sanitizer more often.

The Big Thing and the Big Show

Without question, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the word and feature of this year’s show. It was called out in no less than fifty percent of the booths I saw. Everyone is using AI somewhere. It was as fun to see how they incorporated that into their messaging as well as to see what it actually did. AI has actually been in many different vendor solutions for several years. I can remember hearing the term being used many years ago, when most people just didn’t really know what to call it or do with it. But vendors were talking about how their application or platform could do analysis and provide different insights based on the machine learning engine they had. It has just grown up in the last few years, and the terminology has gone mainstream. ChatGPT exploding onto the scene in 2023 has made it something that almost everyone is interested in, worried about, or taking full advantage of. It is accepted as common now.

Of course, AI can mean many different things. There are numerous use cases that, I believe, will be significant opportunities for retailers in the coming years. These are things that will have the potential to make the lives of Store Managers or multi-unit leaders much easier. However, there is also going to be a window of time when we need to learn what works and what doesn’t. That will be the ‘messy middle’ of this transformation into a new era of smart retailing. In the coming years, we will know more about our customers, what they want, when they want it, and how they want to get it. We’ll get better data and actions on pricing strategies, marketing practices, and service standards that we make guesses on today. The trick will be finding the right balance for each business and how it can help, versus just becoming another overused data point that doesn’t really add value.

Adding Value for Real Stakeholders

I believe the way to ensure that AI is best put to use is not losing sight of whom it really serves. If AI is purely for one segment, it will ultimately fail. If it only benefits corporate folks doing analysis, or financial modeling, it will miss the mark in being fully implemented to grow the business. And if it is solely customer-based, it will also fall short. Finally, if we believe it is only store facing, we will still leave opportunities on the table. AI will need to support all of those segments. It needs to result in more informed store teams and field leaders, both in the products they sell and for providing a better customer experiences. Too much and you’ll end up with an overwhelmed store team and a “weirded out” customer that believes you know too much about them. Blending those with the upstream marketing and analytics team needs and serving customers in a way that adds value will be the ticket in this space.

We have to have the right information at the right time for frontline employees that will help them feel confident in how they can present product information to the customers they serve, regardless of retail genre, demographics, or sales velocity. From grocery to dollar store to luxury brands, data will play a role in better supporting the customer needs via the frontline team member. Field leaders will benefit from knowing how they can best spend their time coaching and developing their teams with the data they can see. Instead of having infinite information, it will be a curated view into what has the most impact right now on the stores they support. Managing unequally will become the norm, but even that will be tailored specifically to the needs of those stores.

I believe the future remains bright for many of these vendors and retails alike. There are cool possibilities. Once we get past the exploratory stage of what AI can do, and begin honing in on what it should do, we will see advances that make different vendors leap ahead. Retailers that embrace and learn now will be the ones that leverage this technology and also make giant leaps in their space in the coming years. It should also make gathering and synthesizing the information more economically and level the playing field between large and small retail companies. Suddenly, even a smaller company can feel like they have a large team of data scientists processing tons of information for productive use. It then is incumbent upon the company to use the data effectively and not get bogged down in the amount of information, by being selective in what they use that is most important to their business.

What AI tools have you begun to use? How are they helping you be a better leader?

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