In the 506 Apple Stores around the world, there is a varied schedule of free events. From today, these are changing significantly, in the biggest development since they were first introduced. Apple Stores have always had areas like the Genius Bar where you can take an Apple gadget that needs a new screen, for instance, and a dedicated set-up area means you're given help with a new iPhone, say, before you leave the store. But it's the live sessions which are changing, the ones which fall into the category called Today at Apple. I visited the company's remarkable Apple Park campus in Cupertino, to try the new events first hand and talk to Angela Ahrendts, Apple's head of retail and Karl Heiselman, senior director of retail.

If you think that freezer door just gave you a second look, you might be right. In their efforts to eliminate marketing misfires in the aisles, more retailers are investing in ways to physically connect with their customers within their stores. From cooler doors that recognize a face to dressing room mirrors that can dim the lights, retailers are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) for one key purpose: to accurately anticipate customer behavior at scale. This was a theme recently of the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York. Specifically, retailers are using AI, facial recognition and other advanced technologies for their physical tracking capabilities, to make better sense of the factors that influence shopper purchase decisions in real time.

Editor's note: This story is the first installment in a monthly series looking at some of the biggest investments grocers and food companies are making. Previous articles sponsored by BMO Harris Bank can be found here. "Hey Google, set my alarm for 8:30 a.m. These are among the most common demands and questions for voice-controlled personal assistants and smart speakers. But once consumers say "Alexa, order me bananas, Honey Nut Cheerios and a loaf of bread," difficulties arise. Conversational commerce, as it is called, is still in its infancy across all industries, Jon Reily, vice president of commerce strategy at Publicis.Sapient, told Grocery Dive. Every retailer, from department stores to grocers, is trying to figure out how best to use it, he said. But food retailers do have an advantage, Reily noted. Unlike other verticals like clothing stores where all products need to be seen before purchasing, much of grocery shopping is replenishment of items like cereal, cat litter, ...

With the introduction of its latest delivery drone iteration, the Scout, Amazon is once again reassuring the shopping public that automated package delivery services are just just around the corner. Just as they've been promising since 2013, when founder Jeff Bezos went on 60 Minutes and claimed that the technology would be commonplace within 5 years. But unfortunately for his predictions, the march of progress rarely sticks to a set schedule. Over the past half decade, a litany of companies worldwide have sought to build and deploy dozens of drone-based delivery services, with varying degrees of success. Last May, Ele.me, Alibaba's online meal ordering service, began using drones in Jinshan Industrial Park to get meals to mouths in just 20 minutes, a fraction of the time it'd take a human courier to drive through Shanghai traffic.

Consumer spending is the primary driver of economic growth in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal (paywall). This makes every fluctuation in retail sales important to a myriad of businesses. Retailers are now turning to artificial intelligence to help protect profits and improve the customer experience. As a chief data scientist, I'm in charge of the development of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) models used internationally in my company's retail, health and safety divisions. I believe stores and their e-commerce counterparts should use AI to prune away actions and processes that do not contribute to net sales or customer satisfaction. This is the growing retailer's best chance to compete against mega-retailers such as Amazon that have a well-developed AI strategy.

Consumer spending is the primary driver of economic growth in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal (paywall). This makes every fluctuation in retail sales important to a myriad of businesses. Retailers are now turning to artificial intelligence to help protect profits and improve the customer experience. As a chief data scientist, I'm in charge of the development of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) models used internationally in my company's retail, health and safety divisions. I believe stores and their e-commerce counterparts should use AI to prune away actions and processes that do not contribute to net sales or customer satisfaction.

Imagine standing on the curb and your taxi pulls up… but there's no driver inside. You climb in the back and press the "start ride" button. Fully self-driving cars are driving around Phoenix, Arizona right now. You can call them just like an Uber. The company achieving all this is called Waymo. Let me tell you… Waymo is absolutely dominating the self-driving car game.

With the advancement of scientific technologies, we have come across a various scientific contribution in recent times. This scientific approach has surely influenced human nature and with recent studies show that the decisions we make are influenced by the technology around us. A strong example of this is the retail industry and the latest integration of Artificial Intelligence. The impact of artificial intelligence on retail purchases can strategically be seen in various segments of the retail industry. For more than a decade, we have seen the retailers collecting customer transaction information through point of sale system which has now become a reliable and easy to access transaction medium for the customer.

The maker of Equal sweeteners and the nutrition brand GNC are among the first to launch products through a program Amazon started last year to outsource the work. Mattress maker Tuft & Needle also recently created a brand called Nod exclusively for Amazon. Amazon's initiative is the latest example of the e-commerce giant flexing its muscles in order to offer the lowest prices and widest selection, as it seeks to cut into the market share of big-brand manufacturers. Also, they risk cannibalizing higher-margin sales of their main brands by offering comparable products under different labels. In exchange for creating exclusive products, the brands get help launching their products on Amazon.com,

"Machine learning applications will be commonplace within the next five years," says a report from Deloitte. I believe that artificial intelligence can enhance retail teams to build a perfect customer journey and increase annual revenue by 5 percent. Such giants as Amazon have been successfully using the power of neural networks to entice buyers: AI-powered pricing recommendations account for 35 percent of the retailer's earnings. "Offering consumers what they want, when they want it, will separate the winners from the losers," says Retail and Consumer Report 2018 by PwC. But from my experience in retail, "what they want" is not only about well-oiled marketing and logistics systems, or the product quality, but also about the prices which buyers deem right.