Like death and taxes, grocery shopping can feel like an inevitable part of life. It’s hard not to dread a shopping trip sometimes; long lines, understocked shelves, and other inefficiencies frequently arise, perhaps especially for big, stock-up trips to warehouse stores and big-box retailers.

To address this customer pain point, some innovative retailers, such as Sam’s Club, have introduced plans to use AI to verify cart contents. Doing so promises to provide greater efficiency. The new system, currently piloted in 10 locations, is expected to be used in all its stores by the end of 2024.

Following its lead, other stores have announced their plans to offer automated solutions too, at nearly every step of buyers’ purchase journey. Clothing brands like H&M, Zara, and Ralph Lauren are revising their sales strategies to integrate virtual mirrors that include behavioral analysis tools, which in turn can automate the product recommendation process. Other systems have been designed to scan each customer’s current clothing choices, then recommend similar or complementary items.

SpartanNash, a grocery store chain based primarily in the Midwest, instead relies on inventory robots to scan store aisles and track inventory levels, identifying understocked or misplaced items. Meanwhile, Home Depot has created an app for its sales associates, which continuously updates restocking priorities, based on real-time analyses of purchases.

Some retailers instead use computer vision technologies in their efforts to reduce shrinkage, which most commonly occurs due to theft. Retailers have installed heat maps to analyze foot traffic within their stores, which can not only alert workers to potential problems but also help the sellers optimize their floor layouts. In its efforts to combat expensive loss and shrinkage, Walmart is actively developing cameras that can analyze customer behaviors, identify those that seem suspicious, and also detect unscanned items in self-checkout lines.

Others have focused their attention even more precisely on checkout operations; currently, no standard or universally adopted checkout process or monitoring strategy exists. Amazon Go was one of the first adopters of computer vision in this area, piloting cashier-less stores, where customers can shop without having to undergo any actual checkout process. These stores use cameras and sensors to track customer selections and charge them automatically. Since then, various sports arenas have adopted a similar method, such that both Lincoln Financial Field and Lumen Field recently introduced checkout-free concession stands, designed to streamline a high-traffic pain point for consumers and sports fans, anxious not to miss a single play on the field.

Similar to most iterations of AI, computer vision seems to become improving at a rapid pace. Some programs even are self-teaching, reporting errors back to their developers, to enable future corrections. Still, experts caution that retailers need to be careful with how they integrate such solutions. As customers become more aware that they are being constantly monitored in stores, they might begin to perceive the privacy intrusions as excessive. In this sense, the need for further data transparency continues to inform future developments.

Likewise, retailers need to be careful to develop these cutting-edge processes in accordance with changing consumer expectations. If stores enjoy substantial profit gains from automated solutions, as seems likely, customers may begin to expect that some of that profit should translate into savings for them, in exchange for the invasiveness they are suffering. On this point, retailers must take care to balance their short-term and profit aims with long-term customer satisfaction goals.

Discussion Questions

1. Have you encountered any of these automated solutions in your own life? How did you react?
2. Which of these solutions are likely to be most beneficial to consumers in the long term? Which solutions will be most beneficial to retailers?

Sources: Dennis Limmer, “How Will Computer Vision Change the Retail Experience?” Retail Wire, March 7, 2024; Gaudenz Boesch, “The 10 Top Applications of Computer Vision in Retail in 2024,” https://viso.ai; Shemmy Majewski, “5 Ways Computer Vision Is Transforming Retail Industry,” https://dlabs.ai, November 21, 2022