Three AI marketing trends for brick-and-mortar retailers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is clearly making its mark on retail marketing, and it’s having the biggest impact in the digital world due to the inherently trackable and quantifiable nature of activity on websites, in digital purchasing and within user accounts. The volume and cleanliness of the e-commerce data make this a perfect environment for leveraging AI. That’s why it’s no surprise that Amazon is one of the paramount AI powerhouses in the world. The volume of data generated by logged-in user accounts on their website — such as information on purchases, add to cart actions, clicks and searches — is huge and allows them to tailor and customize their offerings and grow the business. Brick-and-mortar businesses don’t have the same advantages. The data available is not so easy to access, record and analyze. While machine learning is already, or nearly, viable in some aspects of the retail industry, current AI-driven marketing solutions for brick-and-mortar retail businesses are often extremely expensive and have a poor return on investment in their present form. However, that does not mean that physical retailers will be completely out of the AI game forever. It may take a few more years, but physical retail will begin adopting more of the same strategies that the e-commerce players are able to leverage now in the digital space. It will do this by moving that same trackability and quantifiability into the physical space.