Researchers encourage retailers to embrace AI to better service customers

In research published in Artificial Intelligence Review, the team propose an AI-powered store layout design framework for retailers to best take advantage of recent advances in AI techniques, and its sub-fields in computer vision and deep learning to monitor the physical shopping behaviours of their customers. Any shopper who has retrieved milk from the farthest corner of a shop knows well that an efficient store layout presents its merchandise to both attract customer attention to items they had not intended to buy, increase browsing time, and easily find related or viable alternative products grouped together. A well thought out layout has been shown to positively correlate with increased sales and customer satisfaction. It is one of the most effective in-store marketing tactics which can directly influence customer decisions to boost profitability. QUT researchers Dr Kien Nguyen and Professor Clinton Fookes from the School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics and Professor Brett Martin, QUT Business Schoolteamed up with researchers Dr Minh Le, from the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, and Professor Ibrahim Cil from Sakarya University, Serdivan, Turkey, to conduct a comprehensive review on existing approaches to in store layout design.