Adobe has released it Digital Trends report for 2018, specifically looking into the changing landscape of online retail, as well as the way digital users are reshaping the space. Despite predictions of doom and gloom for bricks-and-mortar, the strength of online sales doesn't mean that physical stores are obsolete. In fact, a 2017 US Census report found that 90 per cent of all retail purchases in America were made in physical stores. Furthermore, 43 per cent of Millennials prefer to research brands and products online before shopping in-store. This reinforces how critical it is that retailers deliver an exceptional and joined-up cohesive experience along the entire shopping journey.

Amazon now has more than 100,000 robots inside its warehouses worldwide. But despite the sheer volume of robotic employees working in its fulfilment centres, Amazon insists robots will not replace human labour entirely - at least, not yet. The firm claims the robots do not have the'common sense' or'dexterity' needed for the job. Amazon uses its robots to carry stock around the expansive warehouse floors and group together all the individual items needed for a specific order. This is done to reduce the amount of interaction humans have with the products.

Amazon's fleet of automated warehouse robots, now more than 100,000 machines strong, is working alongside human employees to help meet the e-commerce giant's massive fulfillment demand. The company's robots carry inventory around massive warehouse floors, compiling all the items for a customer's order and reducing the need for human interaction with the products. But the chief technologist of Amazon Robotics, Tye Brady, insists that these robots are enhancing human efficiencies rather than eliminating warehouse jobs. Amazon has been going full steam ahead when it comes to hiring and now employs over 500,000 people. Brady views the robots as necessary to this growth. "When there are tens of thousands of orders going on simultaneously, you are getting beyond what a human can do," he told the audience at MIT Technology Review's first EmTech Next conference today.

LAHORE - An exhibition titled "2nd Machine Learning Projects" featuring projects of International Technology University students on Artificial Intelligence opened at the Punjab Signal Processing and Information Decoding Research Laboratory on Sunday. The exhibition opened after four-month training of MS and PhD students of ITU who presented their Machine Learning course projects, geared towards solving interesting and locally relevant problems. The projects included a project on grocery stores who always find difficult to forecast sales and purchase of items. The project Walmart Data is aimed at predicting unit sales quantities of sales items across 54 grocery stores using the technique of rolling means and LSTM neural. This project will help managers in warehouse management, manpower estimation and effective sales promotions.

When the last of 807 Woolworths stores across the UK closed in January 2009, budget shoppers and pick and mix fans mourned the end of an era. The closure of one of the country's iconic retail chains showed that high street shops were struggling to keep up with the pace of change, and that even industry giants were not immune from disruption. History repeated itself earlier this year when major toy store Toys R Us became yet another casualty. Heralding the death of the high street seems somewhat severe, but it's clear that incumbent retailers are facing a monumental challenge. In the face of ecommerce behemoths, (and not just Amazon), retailers are increasingly becoming technology companies in their own right.

Walmart is taking on Amazon with a new shop-by-text service. The $50-a-month membership program lets harried shoppers use text messages to order items that are delivered to their doorstep. Called Jetblack, it lets shoppers buy items from Walmart.com and other retailers and marks the latest effort by the nation's largest retailer to cater to higher-income consumers. Walmart is taking on Amazon with a new shop-by-text service. It's being tested in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, but is expected to roll out to more regions over time.

This was a sponsored post by AIMIA under the Master Report series. An average US household has 30 loyalty cards, of which 54% are inactive. The number is even higher for the APAC region. Customers, who shopped more often at retailers due to their loyalty offerings, have dropped from 34% (2013) to 28% (2016). Retail loyalty is very common, but still the hardest nut to crack.

Japanese businesses will share industrial data with members of other sectors and even direct rivals in hopes of boosting productivity overall, through a private initiative led by retailer Seven & i Holdings and a separate government platform. Advances in artificial intelligence enable companies to use so-called big data in ways they could not before, to seek deeper understanding of customer behavior. For instance, pooling information from Seven & i's 23 million daily customer interactions and mobile provider NTT Docomo's network of 76 million mobile subscribers could help pinpoint areas where everyday shopping is inconvenient, which would help with planning the expansion of online supermarkets. Combining knowledge of people's movements and tastes could also help with building attractive towns and planning store locations. From June, Seven & i -- the department store operator and parent of convenience store giant Seven-Eleven Japan -- will link up with nine other companies, including Docomo, railway operator Tokyu, trading company Mitsui & Co. and megabank Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.

"Digitizing" store shelves is a new imperative for Coca-Cola and other CPG companies. In the face of changing consumer behavior and the new retail playbook scripted by Amazon, CPG brands have raced to hop on the "digitization" bandwagon to erase the advantage e-commerce has over brick-and-mortar retail. Now add this area to their get-even list: store shelves. For decades, CPG companies like Coca-Cola have conducted manual audits and surveys to see if, how and where stores stock their goods on shelves, as well as find out if their goods are next to rivals' products and if any out-of-stock items have been replenished. Thanks to technology, this old-school and time-consuming process, prone to human errors, is increasingly being dropped as CPG brands seek to bridge the gap between what they can see in stores and online.

Fleiss said one of the technologies that will usher retail into the future will be the ability to have a personalized shopping experience through text messaging and online chat. The U.S. retail giant is pouring billions of dollars into beefing up its e-commerce business and has recently announced partnerships with logistics companies to deliver groceries ordered online. Two such partnerships Walmart had struck with ride hailing services Uber and Lyft have ended, however, Reuters reported earlier this month. Jetblack, which is available with a monthly membership fee of $50, will offer same-day and next-day delivery at no additional cost. The challenge for the service will be competing with other established membership services like Amazon Prime and Prime Now, which already enjoy wide adoption and are popular with urban consumers.