One of the fascinating questions about technology revolves around its impact on our everyday lives. Edge computing is another emerging technological phenomenon disrupting most industries, including retail.

Brick-and-mortar retailers are looking for innovative ways that can bring shoppers back to the physical stores. Modern retail stores are learning the ropes of imaginative and enhanced customer experiences to increase customer retention. Here’s how you can do it too. 

Taking Retail Sector To A Whole New Level with Edge Computing

Today’s customer is looking for a highly personalized customer experience. By leveraging technology, you can make the most of this type of hyper-personalization. Whether offering discounts on customers’ favorite items or allowing them to visualize themselves in their favorite outfits, edge computing can go a long way in bringing life back to brick-and-mortar stores.

Immersive Customer Experience

Advances in machine learning have allowed augmented reality to bring new and ground-breaking immersive experiences to customers. Virtual VR-enabled mirrors can do more than just reflect your image to you. They can now augment it by adjusting not only your makeup but also what you wear, your hair, and fashion accessories. Companies such as Sephora and SensMi have already introduced 3D augmented reality mirrors that offer buyers unforgettable immersive experiences. 

Smart mirrors such as these take customer experience up a massive notch and give the latter a great incentive to keep returning to the stores and increase traffic.  

Edge technology does not just halt at smart mirrors. Retail stores can augment a buyer’s space with potential items of furniture, appliances, cabinetry, etc. This helps consumers to envision what their new reality could look like and even try adjustments without any real stakes.

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Point of Sale Resilience   

Loss of connectivity can cause significant problems for uninterrupted sales. A reliable point of sale system ensures that a sale happens transparently and efficiently. This becomes especially important when a retail establishment is located in an area with poor connectivity.

On the other hand, large stores must also ensure reliable systems that allow customers to check in or check out at multiple points. Edge computing offers a reliable point-of-sale system that can supervise payments and process customer data both in the absence or presence of the internet. They do this by synchronizing peer-to-peer data, allowing devices to operate offline, and creating backups in the cloud.  

At the same time, contactless delivery powered by AI, computer vision, and machine learning, helps boost sales for retailers. According to a survey, introducing smart edge computing tools, such as camera tracking, and automatically charging customers for purchases via apps have led to a 4-5% increase in their overall revenue.

Another example of point-of-sale retention is the digital signage introduced by certain food and beverage companies. These digital signs incentivize purchases through video or animation-based content and raise brand awareness.  

Preventing Inventory Loss and Theft

Research on edge computing in retail has shown that edge-enabled tracking and video analytics have reduced inventory loss and theft by a considerable 20 percent. According to a research conducted by Matt Aslett a few years ago, introducing edge computing in retail has lowered the cost of storage and connectivity by 33%. AI-powered devices allow companies to make more informed and demand-based decisions that generate better results. One reason for this is the massive amount of data stored on edge and the cloud, which offers valuable and actionable insights.  

Retailers are now tapping into edge computing technology to secure these insights relating to shrinking patterns and inventory assessment. The technology will also help lower latency, thereby supporting the analytics on which a company’s robotics usually depend.  

Store Analytics

One of the ways edge computing is creating major disruptions for retail is by supporting in-store analytics required by companies to direct more traffic toward their outlets. This is done by keeping customers informed in real time about upcoming promotions, discounts, and new arrivals via apps.  

With IoT-embedded devices becoming more prevalent, in-store devices will turn more responsive. Researchers are now introducing smart applications, including automated warehouse handling systems and smart shelving systems whose primary task would be to take off your store’s analytics. They will not only track the supply chain but also manage your inventory without human intervention. According to a study, 81% of executives expect edge applications to enhance operational responsiveness this way.

With edge computing, local devices can analyze the data and send results to a central server about updating the inventory count, tracking an order, etc.

Proximity Marketing

Proximity marketing refers to the practice of marketing items based on a person’s location. With this approach, firms target customers that are physically closer to their products. Traditionally, triangulation and GPS technologies do this, but edge-enabled devices use advanced machine learning features to connect with customers’ smartphones and promote brand awareness.

It is now possible for customers to swipe their mobile screens to the announcement of a discount on a product in a nearby store or a coupon for purchasing products of their interest.

Although some buyers find proximity marketing somewhat intrusive, there’s a great possibility of many more customers opting to share data with their favorite stores. This will allow retailers to monitor past purchasing behaviors, personalize messages, and synchronize their customers’ online and offline shopping experiences.

Edge Computing for Retail-The Way of the Future  

According to Silverpeak’s Pamplin, the ultimate retail experience will be where fully-automated cashiers track customer behaviors and personalize their experiences. With the rise in online and offline competition, brick-and-mortar outlets, especially smaller stores, will have to think of out-of-box ways of engaging consumers and drawing traffic.

Already larger companies such as Amazon and Cleveron offer customers the choice to collect their favorite items from locations that are convenient to them, whether they are in-stores or public buildings. Other retailers, such as Uniqlo and Best Buy, invest in edge computing to ensure self-serving shopping experiences in smaller, developing locations.

To compete with the highly personalized online shopping trends set by bigger companies, retailers will have to think of leveraging edge computing to find relevant customer data, sending them to private or public clouds, and increasing retention.

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References

https://blog.lumen.com/5-edge-computing-use-cases-revolutionizing-retail/
https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/retail/edge-computing
https://objectbox.io/retail-edge-computing/
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/how-retail-being-pushing-towards-edge-computing/
https://atos.net/en/solutions/edge-computing-infrastructure/edge-computing-for-retail