AI Poised To Disrupt Retail During the Next Five Years
5-21-2019
American retailers believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform the retail industry, as reported by Synchrony and Oxford Economics in their newly released study, “Shopping for AI.”
The study, which surveyed 324 U.S. retail executives, revealed that 80 percent of respondents believe AI will change the online customer experience; 72 percent believe it will be a competitive necessity for businesses within the next five years.
Large retailers are the biggest adopters of AI technology and are the most likely to use AI for machine learning, virtual agents, and robotic process automation subsets. However, nearly half of retail companies of all sizes plan to incorporate AI into their businesses over the next three years. The study showed that retailers plan to employ AI for a variety of purposes, including quality control (46 percent), analyzing data to forecast market trends (46 percent), fraud detection (45 percent), and inventory planning (43 percent).
“AI is one of the most disruptive technologies for the retail industry—impacting supply chains, customer service, and payments,” said Greg Simpson, chief technology officer and AI leader at Synchrony. “Investing in AI technology is no longer optional for merchants, but some may struggle with leveraging the insights in the most effective way to glean true outcomes.”
Many businesses are already using AI-powered technologies to improve their data insights to the next level and enhance customer experiences. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they use AI to capture data and learn more from customers, and 40 percent said they use this data to predict customer behavior.
Many retailers, however, said they face challenges to investing in AI technologies, including a lack of budget and mature technology and difficulty prioritizing investments.
About ETA
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry. Our members span the breadth of significant payments and fintech companies, from the largest incumbent players to the emerging disruptors in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries around the world. ETA members make commerce possible by processing approximately $56.75 trillion annually in purchases and P2P payments worldwide and deploying payments innovation to merchants and consumers.
ETAs membership spans the breadth of the payments industry to include independent sales organizations (ISOs), payments networks, financial institutions, transaction processors, mobile payments products and services, payments technologies, and software providers (ISV) and hardware suppliers. For more information, visit electran.org.