How technology is changing the retail space

Large retailers are starting to utilise machine learning, combined with predictive analytics, to assist them in enhancing consumer engagement and in creating more accurate demand forecasts as they expand into new sales channels. With machine learning, computers learn by mining massive amounts of big data, without human intervention, to provide unprecedented consumer demand insights. When one couples machine learning with other technologies, like facial recognition solutions, says David Cosgrave, Customer Intelligence Lead at SAS, there is the potential to shift from active engagement to automated engagement in the retail space. "A good example of how such automated engagement may change the retail experience in the future can be found in the experimental Amazon Go shop. This is a new US store, for Amazon employees, which is completely automated. Consumers simply walk in, choose their products and walk out, and the in-store technology detects who is taking what thanks to facial recognition software. This is combined with deep learning that enables the system to know what products have been taken, and the system automatically debits the user's account."