Forbes Covering Cashierless Shopping of AVA retail

Economic and technological shifts have rewritten the shopping journey. What was once transactional in nature is instead focused on relationship building. Each step of that journey – whether offline or online – is centered on how to elevate consumer engagement in order to deepen said relationship.

Taken together, these shifts have led to a plethora of store closings, thus, giving rise to the notion of an impending retail apocalypse. Thankfully for sleepless retail executives, the impending doom has been overstated. Euromonitor International projects 83% of goods purchased globally in 2022 will still be bought in store.

In recent years, talk of Amazon has dominated industry gatherings, but at this week’s National Retail Federation’s annual show, NRF 2018: Retail’s Big Show, the internet retailer behemoth was largely mentioned only in hush tones. It seems the industry is starting to push back on the notion that the end is near for brick-and-mortar outlets. Instead of shifting into a defensive mode, retailers are going on the offense, and using technology to entice consumers to shop both online and in store.

The floor of NRF 2018 gave a glimpse of three ways technology will change how consumers shop in store by 2020.

● Prices that change by the hour

Taking a page from online retailers, brick-and-mortar retailers will be able to change prices on products and services hourly. The technology will enable retailers to adjust prices on-the-go or mark down weekly specials more efficiently. Retailers can even make adjustments based on supply and demand.

Couple this technology with more affordable item-level sensors and grocers could more quickly locate and drop prices on food that may spoil in the coming days. In recent years, RFID tags have fallen in price to roughly six cents, making it more affordable to digitize the supply chain. Item-level sensors could also be leveraged to power a more seamless checkout as well as a tool to drive future customer engagement.

Kroger, the largest grocer in the US after Walmart, is an example of one retailer that has committed to digital price tags in nearly 200 stores by the end of 2018. Kroger Edge will also be able to share nutritional information and highlight items that match a consumer’s dietary restrictions. One day it could eventually be able to communicate with customers’ smartphones to highlight products on their shopping list as they walk down aisles – helping hurried shoppers quickly locate the desired product.

● Shopping in an enhanced reality

Technology is enabling retailers to mix digital with reality to enhance consumer engagement and boost brand loyalty. While many of the first use cases in commerce have been deployed more so to enrich online shopping, retailers are starting to use the technology to create more fun, experiential settings in store.

ModiFace, which is behind many of the augmented reality mobile apps used by several beauty brands today to visualize looks, recently released an augmented reality mirror for in-store use. The mirror, which leverages facial tracking and 3D video, enables consumers to try on different makeup shades in store. SenseMi’s interactive smart mirror does the same for beauty as well as fashion, enabling consumers to virtually try on an outfit even before entering a fitting room.

Using only light, Spacee out of Texas has developed a technology that transforms virtually any 2D or 3D surface into an interactive touch screen. At NRF 2018, Spacee was showcasing how it worked with Walmart to create an end-cap for Nest products using only its technology and plastic pieces that mimicked the shape of the actual Nest products. In high-theft categories like consumer electronics, the faux end-caps can eliminate security concerns for retailers altogether while providing end-consumers with a more enhanced experience that better showcases what a product can do.

● Unmanned checkouts that eliminate the need for cashiers

Since Amazon Go made headlines a year ago, retailers have been knocking on the doors of technology firms wanting to understand how to create unmanned store fronts themselves. The rise of more affordable item-level tagging brought forth by the Internet of Things era and new computer learning technologies and smarter algorithms ushered in by artificial intelligence have made it possible. In some cases, retailers have been blinded by the bright shiny new nature of these technologies rather than considering if it fits for their format. For example, such technology makes more sense in convenience stores where retailers do not expect store personnel to upsell consumers.

Vendors are responding to the increased demand for unmanned checkouts. Mastercard showcased its partnership with Ava Retail to create unmanned checkouts in convenience store environments. The sensor technology tracks the consumer in store and adds their items to a virtual shopping cart. When the consumer leaves the store, the cart is transferred to a mobile app and the payment is processed through Mastercard’s Masterpass. Others like Intel and IBM now also offer a suite of technologies to create staff-free stores. Meanwhile, it is already happening in China as Alibaba and JD.com are actively testing and announcing plans to open more unmanned posts.

Now it is up to retailers

In an era in which everyone sells everything, retailers must work harder to differentiate themselves from others. Retailers can no longer win on price or proximity. Instead, retailers need to hearken back to their brand promise and uncover what differentiates them from others selling the same goods. Technology will be key to assisting retailers with creating new, meaningful ways for consumers to interact with the brand. The biggest issue holding back retailers is not the availability of technologies, but instead the inability to understand and adopt the ones that will further their brand ethos.

Source Forbes

AVA retail Announces Shopping Made Easy, with AVA SmoothShop

AVA retail is excited to announce the immediate availability of AVA SmoothShop™. This IoT solution uses Microsoft Azure to empower retailers to deliver truly frictionless shopping for their customers.

For the shopper, it’s as easy as one-two-three. Log in with your phone, pick up your products, and walk out of the store. No waiting in check-out lines, or even any self-checkout. The IoT Sensor fusion, built with AVA retail technology as the cornerstone, tracks the shopper and all the items selected in a virtual shopping cart. When the shopper leaves the store, the cart is transferred to the app on their phone, and the payment is processed.

Through this digital transformation of physical retail, the retailer is introducing a truly ground-breaking shopping experience, all while capturing shopper data and insights that they’ve never had before. Store associates that were once behind the checkout counter can now be on the floor, helping customers. Retailers can expect high sales volume and revenue from this more compelling shopping experience, as well as more efficient staffing models to drive higher margins.

“Retailers globally are already investing in the digital transformation of their stores, looking for ways to both learn more about their in-store shoppers and find ways to enhance that shopping experience to better compete with the e-tail shopping experience,” said Atul Hirpara, CEO of AVA retail. “Our company has been leveraging IoT technology, computer vision and sensor fusion, powered by Microsoft Azure, to solve these problems since its founding in 2015. AVA SmoothShop is the natural evolution of that effort.”

This solution has been in a fully functioning pilot in San Francisco since October, 2017. The technology is now commercially available and was just on display in live demos at The National Retail Federation Big Show, January 14-16, in New York City.

Bharat Popat, Retail Industry Solutions Director, at Microsoft Corp. says: “AVA retail has been a trusted partner of Microsoft and our Retail Industry team for several years. Their IoT-based shopper analytics solution has been a key part of Microsoft’s Retail solutions portfolio for consumer shopping experiences, and this AVA Analytics and SmartTrack technology plays a prominent role for delivering new shopping experiences”.

“Microsoft Azure is the secure, scalable cloud solution and it is our preferred cloud platform as we commercialize our frictionless shopping solution,” said Atul Hirpara. “In this solution, we use Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, Azure IoT, Azure SQL Database and Azure HDInsight”.

COMPANY BACKGROUND

AVA retail is a Redmond, Washington based company that provides actionable insights by digitally transforming brick-and-mortar retail to deliver more profitable and engaging customer experiences. AVA retail brings true parity to physical retailers to what the top e-tailers can do, making them competitive again. Why can’t a retailer track every shopper as they travel through the store and interact with products? Why can’t they track dwell time and paths? Why can’t they deliver insights and predictions, in real time and over time?

The answer is, with AVA retail they can. AVA retail leverages IoT sensors to digitally transform physical retail locations, creating digital footprints of in-store shoppers, store associates and store inventory that was not available before. AVA retail then converts this data into insights through their Analytics dashboard, empowering retailers and CPG companies to create better shopper experiences, better staffing efficiency, and higher sales conversion.

This high fidelity dna analysis of retail shoppers is made possible through the proprietary fusion and placement of sensors by AVA retail, and the Azure cloud-enabled Artificial Intelligence converts this data into actionable insights. AVA retail leverages existing camera and sensor infrastructure, combined with new sensors where necessary, to implement the ideal retailer solution. Shoppers are tracked anonymously, unless they choose to be identified through a mobile login process. Vision-based tracking, combined with other sensors, enables retailers to gain a more complete understanding of their shopper behavior, versus technologies that rely exclusively on tracking phone signals.

Data, Digitization and the Smart Store

Stores are becoming increasingly more connected. The Internet of Things will allow retailers to transform their brick and mortar locations to offer more contextual and efficient consumer experiences. Consumers can expect more frictionless shopping, which will be as simple as walking into a store, selecting what they want, and then walking away. The payment will happen securely and seamlessly behind the scenes. Technology helps digitize the physical world, opening the door for retailers to gain unique visibility into data that was historically unavailable or inaccessible. These newly available insights can be instrumental in enhancing customer service and product level decisions. Data is transforming the physical into digital.

That’s why Mastercard and AVA retail are teaming up. Together we will provide retailers with the same level of analytics in-store that are available in the e-commerce environment, enabling them to know not just what their customers ultimately buy, but also see where they are spending their time and what items they are browsing.

All of this can be made available real-time, giving a retailer the ability to offer more dynamic pricing and product selection, and more effectively measure campaigns. In addition, retailers can use this insight to drive greater efficiency within their store operations as well as look to drive increased throughput by better anticipating and serving their customers’ needs. Of course, security and consumer privacy are foundational, which is why we are focused on enabling these types of insights based on aggregated and anonymized data.  Building on the leading digital technologies of both Mastercard and AVA retail, together we are enabling the transformation of brick and mortar.

At NRF 2018: Retail’s Big Show, we will showcase a truly unique frictionless shopping experience, deployed today as a pilot in San Francisco, that will bring the in-store analytics to life for retailers. By leveraging our combined capabilities — Mastercard provides security, analytics, and digital payment assets, along with AVA retail’s deep expertise in computer vision, sensor fusion, digitization, and retail analytics — we enable retailers to drive innovative shopping experiences with positive bottom line impact.

Our shared vision is that the shopping experience can be both better and smarter, for both the consumer and the retailer. Consumers will benefit from personalized, contextualized and seamless shopping experiences, while retailers will create stronger connections with consumers that lead to increased conversions and loyalty to their brand. As data transforms the physical into digital – both consumers and retailers will benefit. We can’t wait to see what happens next.

From: Mastercard Blog