Survey: 45% of retailers plan to use AI in next 3 years

About 45% of retailers plan to use artificial intelligence technology within the next three years to improve customer experiences, according to the Boston Retail Partners 2017 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey. The survey results also found that 55% of retailers are refining mobile shopping and unified commerce experiences with an eye toward increasing customer loyalty and improving the overall customer experience. Also on the mobile front, about 59% of retailers said they will use Wi-Fi and 63% said they will use mobile apps to identify customers while they are shopping in their stores. AI emerged as one of the hottest technologies of 2016, and though there was a lot of activity last year, retail was just getting started. It was used in everything from the AI-based navigation and information apps at the Mall of America and Fashion Island mall to efforts by payments companies to deploy AI to fight fraud.