Report: 45% of retailers expect to use AI within 3 years

A significant number of retail store closings so far in 2017 point to the challenges brick-and-mortar merchants face as e-commerce continues to grow. At the time, there are also signs that innovate technology like AR, AI and shoppable social is helping some segments, like beauty, buck the broader downward trends. The unified commerce customer experience highlight by BRP points to one of the challenges facing traditional retailers, which is having to provide expected in-store experiences like being able to physically examine merchandise and interact with sales associates as well as unique and personalized e-commerce shopping engagements that are now expected by many consumers. While many retailers are already active in e-commerce to varying degrees, they will need to adopt newer technologies to stay current with consumers' expectations. BRP's Kramer framed next-gen technology as exponentially expanding the complexity of retail, suggesting a significant issue retailers could face going forward will be the learning curve that will coincide with the maturation of emerging tech like AI, the machine learning subset of AI and even the proliferation of IoT devices.