Michele Walter China

Empowering Retail event
Unique In-Store experiences through AI and Digital Innovation

The in-store experience leverages innovation.

Artificial intelligence and data, for growth, key topics:

Companies pay great attention to the point of sale, which is increasingly a place for experiences
Distinctive and engaging opportunities can now be enabled with interactive emotional moments, thanks to artificial intelligence
New touchless retail experience solutions, controlled with human gesture and presented by Munogu and Microsoft, integrate Azure/OpenAI into the new Retail copilot

Milan – 4 March 2024 – We talked about experiential marketing in the point of sale and digital innovation with artificial intelligence and data, at the workshop organized by Munogu and Microsoft in the Microsoft Technology Center, in Viale Pasubio 21 in Milan, where customers of different industries, from Retail to Lifestyle, to Design, to Technology.

“Artificial Intelligence – opened Agnese Giordano, Technical Architect, Retail – MTC Milano, @Microsoft – represents a great opportunity for all companies. It has generated, and will generate even more in the future, changes in the way businesses operate and people work, bringing greater value to all sectors. It will make available new, more engaging ways to enrich the employee experience, it will reinvent customer engagement, putting the customer at the centre, and it will give new forms to business processes. It is estimated that 5.4 billion hours worked per year will be saved (equal to the hours worked annually in the Czech Republic – Source: The Ambrosetti House & Microsoft study “AI 4 Italy – Impacts and prospects of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Italy and Made in Italy”) which will be freed up in favor of more profitable activities, creativity, productivity and new experiences. In the Retail sector, it will support the valorisation of data at unprecedented levels, making more information and insights available for organisations, it will support companies in the implementation of intelligent supply chains in real time, thanks to generative AI, it will give more tools to sale and will take the shopping experience to another level.”

Already today, retailers recognize the importance of returning to focus on the point of sale, concentrating on the experience they offer to the customer. Stores are no longer just transactional centers, but are transforming into places of hybrid and engaging experiences. We started from hybridization of services, offering cafeteria spaces inside bookshops, or exploiting similar synergies, to now arrive at #phygital experiences, which integrate the strength of physical interaction with the flexibility and benefits of digital, for interactive experiences, emotional, immersive. These experiential retail spaces are creating destinations that offer more than just products, turning shopping into an event.

But not only that: integration with Digital offers various opportunities to Retailers, in the #phygital field, opportunities that were once unavailable. Investments in Digital Innovation are growing at a rapid pace, as confirmed by the Polimi Digital Innovation in Retail Observatory – 2024, which records significant increases in the dedicated study. We invest both in the client-facing and back-end areas, in activities that are able to make better use of available data or enable more convenient and easily usable experiences.

Digital Signage, interactive kiosks, self scanning, innovative payment solutions, but also interactive booths, integrated with warehouse and store assistant for more fluid purchasing experiences, as well as intelligent shelves or self-checkin/checkout to reduce queues, thanks the steps forward in omnichannel integration are also arriving in Italy.

“To create effective experiences – commented Gabriella Bergaglio – Client Partner & Business Development Director, @Munogu – a concept design is needed that takes into account various elements, from the objectives of the experience, to the themes of involvement, to the spaces involved and the advantages associated (data collection on interactions, traffic, public behaviour). Elements such as customer empowerment, ease of interaction, the ability to generate amazement, together with emotional potential, make the difference in building an effective context. Large players such as IKEA, but not only, have long had in mind the impacts that well-designed experiences in the customer’s journey within the store can have, in terms of engagement and facilitation of the purchasing process. The interactive experiences proposed by Munogu are hidden technology, and for this reason generate a surprise effect that activates stopping power and emotions. The NUI (Natural User Interface) interface then enables these interactions through the human gesture, keeping the relationship and the interaction itself simple and quick to learn. New opportunities are therefore available today for Retailers in terms of Brand experience, infotainment, product reminders at the point of sale or in any case close to the purchase. Technology advances and enables new opportunities capable of creating moments of interaction that can influence, facilitate and speed up the sales process.”

Michele China, Chief Innovation Officer @Munogu, concluded: “The most innovative solutions, such as the Digital Assistant copilot Retail, recently developed by Munogu in partnership with Microsoft, give an idea of the disruptiveness of Artificial Intelligence also in terms of Customer Experience . Thanks to the integration with Azure OpenAI, any question can be asked to the Digital Assistant copilot Retail, verbally. Integrations with legacy information systems further increase the potential. Furthermore, the Digital Assistant can orchestrate different types of experiences, such as that of Armocromia, which offers armochromic profiles to users with suggestions on the colors that best bring out the complexion of the user involved. An even more fun way to offer personalization, interaction and surprise, critical elements for successful experiences.”

MUNOGU is an innovative agency founded in 2017 with the aim of providing technological solutions capable of effectively achieving the integration of digital into physical space, thanks to a profound knowledge of spatial sensors and the most modern AI-based technologies. Our products help analyze and improve the experience in public spaces and shops and offer moments of interaction that can facilitate and accelerate the sales process.

Experience marketing is conceived by us as a relevant tool to enrich the customer journey, while providing useful analysis for brand engagement and store management strategies. Munogu solutions are designed to respond to these needs by offering Customers new experiential touchpoints with which to integrate the purchasing journey with surprising interactive experiences, generating attractiveness and attention, collecting data and enabling an effective omnichannel approach.

Munogu is proud to have been chosen as a Strategic Partner by Microsoft, is resident asset at the Microsoft Technology Center in Milan and Zurich, official partner of EY, and business partner of BBC Technology for integrated payment solutions. Thanks to this collaboration, Munogu is able to integrate data flows coming from cash register, inventory and logistics systems with those coming from environmental sensors, contributing significantly to defining a data lake for the entire retail chain, necessary to take rational decisions from a data driven perspective. Distinctive and engaging opportunities can now be enabled with interactive emotional moments, thanks to artificial intelligence

Color analysis: A new opportunity for the retail

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they used to say, but despite this saying, a hymn to freedom of expression and to indisputably of tastes, has always been used in beauty and fashion industry as an excuse for any purchase choice. Today this affirmation seems to be no longer true. Or it is?

The answer is no and the response comes from the color analysis, an image consulting branch that provides a scientific base which defines the concept of beauty in a sector leaded by trends and tastes, drawing up meticulous guidelines for a successful look creation based on the individual chromatic characteristics of every single person.

This theory has its roots in the Bauhaus painting of Johannes Itten, a portrait painter who first realized how the choice of a specific background has a direct influence on the portrait; how the colors of the face in the foreground were enhanced or dull depending on the shades of the season used in the background.

The results of this chromatic research have soon been applied in fashion and beauty field, with the publishing, at the end of 70s, of the book “Color me a Season” of Berenice Kenter, a cosmetologist and image consultant who first formalized the concept of Seasonal Theory, according to which, the colors of the face of a person are in harmony with the typical color of one of the four seasons, which, if used for the choice of garment, accessories or beauty, enhance the incarnate making the face prettier, healthier and more harmonic.

The color analysis, is based on the study of the tones, contrasts and intensity of the colors of the main face elements, which classifies the person in one of the four seasons, each one with associated specific color palettes called friends colors, an actual vademecum for the choice of garment, accessories and makeup.

Despite the principals of the color analysis have long been recognized and used by the field experts, the phenomenon become a trend in Italy just at the end of 2019, thanks to the influencer and image consultant Rossella Migliaccio and the book, published by Villardi, “Armocromia”.
The book, which consists of a manual on the rules governing color harmony and classification by seasons, has become a best seller, creating the term Armofollia.

The phenomenon, which has created numerous image consultants specializing in color analysis to respond to the growing demand, is today a great opportunity for brands in the fashion and beauty sectors to exploit the different potential of the trend to plan marketing capable of attracting consumers, increasing brand retention and expanding the user base with more complete and customized shopping experiences.

The partnership between Munogu with BBC Technologies designed an experience that brings color analysis into the store, using technologies capable of detecting the colors of a face through the acquisition of a photo, guaranteeing a precise and immediate color analysis.

Carrying out an in-store color analysis, as well as constituting an innovative service that responds to a growing demand, represents an ideal drive to store initiative as a starting point for building an omnichannel action that synergically involves the in-store and online experience, with both customer and corporate benefits, by building a new, faster and more personalized shopping experience.

Color analysis would first of all make the customers more aware and autonomous in the decision-making phase, offering a service that, in addition to being engaging, is of effective practical utility, capable of enriching and simplifying the experience in the choice phase and leading to greater post-purchase satisfaction.

The greater awareness of consumers should be followed with a cataloging of products in seasons, facilitating the customer journey both in the store and online, with the possibility of further personalizing the profile, allowing to the users to filter the products according to their “seasons”.

This service, beside constituting, brings an additional value by increasing brand retention and expanding the customer base in the store, influencing both customers loyalty and brand reputation, demonstrating attention and inclusiveness towards all phototypical characteristics, then allowing the company to implement a data collection based on a new objective segmentation criteria and on unchanging data over time, useful for CRM initiatives and personalized advertising.

The theme also acts as a pivot around which to plan communication strategies, involving both influencers and opinion leaders in the sector, and on which to build social events capable of generating content produced independently by consumers, contributing to the trend setting of the phenomenon.

The application of color harmony to the retail world therefore constitutes a fertile ground, still not sufficiently explored by companies, on which to design cross actions capable of making a difference in a period in which the consumer needs a valid reason to return to the store after a year that has upset the buying habits of many, shifting them online.

Therefore, if we have already answered the initial question, highlighting how the purchasing choices are now governed by a new concept of “beauty” regulated by precise scientific rules, another one appears:

“Which brand will be the first to exploit the potential of this trend, making it an important opportunity to grow its business? “

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Successful retail strategies for the New Normal

“Retail apocalypse”, or the end of retail in its current form: it’s a buzzword scaring many decision makers around the world since a few years now.

Statistics and numbers seem to speak for themselves: according to the Osservatorio del Politecnico di Milano, in Italy alone, around 61,789 points of sale disappeared between 2010 and 2018.

A real carnage able to re-shape urban spaces and re-design accessibility to services.

The dramatic crisis linked to the pandemic, moreover, seems to have given a further acceleration to all the processes of disruption already generated by the digitalization of commerce and services.

The New Normal, as the post-pandemic consumption scenario is defined, suggests the affirmation of the paradigm of the “distanced consumption” as the only safe consumption model. Consumers can buy products protected from risks, in the peace of their homes. Especially those with greater economic means and better access to technology seem to prefer this way of shopping and this is why I derived the concept from the “conspicuous consumption” theory introduced by Veblen.

Which other instrument guarantees better remote access to products and services, if not the web?

That’s it. Period. Traditional (physical) retail to have entered a process of irreversible decline.

But is this really the case?

A recent research by Kearney has shown that about 81% of GenZ still prefer to shop in physical stores, even though e-commerce remains the most selected channel. According to the results of this research, traditional shopping allows young people to discover other products more effectively than the digital world and enable GenZ to disconnect, at least temporarily, from social media. Brand flagship stores stand out in the ranking of the most loved shopping formats.

McKinsey, too, through a recent survey focused on grocery sector, explains how consumers have massively turned to online shopping driven by the COVID emergency. Online sales scored record growth rates, in Italy, even by up 100%. But the trend is momentary and return to physical shopping is expected, with negative outlooks for the percentage of online sales in almost all EU-5 countries.

The record shows, therefore, that the next big real thing will be omnichannel shopping, in which online and offline shopping experiences merge into an “infinite customer journey”. The consumer will move fluidly between digital and physical shopping formats. Likely, the conclusion of the purchasing process will progressively move online, but the level of service guaranteed to shoppers will have to be structured in such a way to replicate the physical experience online, while the in-store experience will have to be totally integrated with the digital one.

@Munogu we believe that the near future of retail will be the Omniexperience, well beyond pure omnichannel.

Omniexperience represents a “frictionless, unified and highly engaging” shopping experience, designed around consumer’s needs, where all the “touch-points” are connected thanks to Technology, Marketing and CRM.

“The store” will be transformed into an “agorà”, i.e., an open platform, within which all consumers may experience and discover products and then buy where they prefer. The flagship store must also turn the values of the Brand it represents into tangible experiences.

The final objective on the omniexperience strategy is the creation of a greater value for Companies, through the maximization of the Customer Lifetime Value (on-life customer).

To cope with the requirements of Omniexperience, the physical retail space will have to take on the connotation of a “deeply experiential context”.

By no means should this experiential context simply become a space filled with technologies that are an end in themselves and unconnected, as if they were a pure divertissement to provide interesting ideas for PR offices.

Following the “hidden technology” paradigm, a theory that has always inspired Munogu’s solutions, to be successful technology must be put at the service of the consumer without ever becoming invasive. Overwhelming and not user-centric approaches will otherwise create an over-complex environment that goes against the logic of a fluid shopping experience, that is required by the omni-experience business model. To be effective, the “wow effect” must be conceived with the only objective of converting, not of merely surprising our customers.

Unfortunately, little time is left to companies to re-model their obsolete customer journeys. The market environment has now become impervious and totally unpredictable.

Already back in 2019, taking only the Fashion Industry as an example, customer retention rate was close to 91% for those retailers with effective omnichannel strategies while it stopped at 39% for players without an omnichannel approach.

The “new normal” will open a further furrow between companies that are able to meet consumers’ changing habits and those that will simply sit and watch the number of their stores and their market shares shrink.

To speed up the transformation process, it is necessary to quickly acquire the tools and the knowledge to ensure a transition toward the “omni-experience” model, while maintaining a positive ROI.

This innovation process must start with the implementation of new technologies for retail analytics.

As for digital also for retail “data” are becoming the cornerstone of every strategic decision: advanced retail analytics must be quickly integrated into the infrastructure to obtain irrefutable information about the target, its purchase funnel inside the store and about the performance of retail spaces and their layout.

Thanks to its ability to combine in a single AI-tool advanced retail analytics services (biometric and non-biometric) and unique, simple and innovative in-store experiences, that put in constant relation the physical with the digital, Kiosk, the omni-experience enabling technology suite by Munogu, has earned a prominent place in the Microsoft Technology Center in Milan and a prestigious clientele that includes, among others, FCA, Scavolini, Breil, Porsche US and Poste Italiane.

Start your omniexperience revolution today, as tomorrow it will be too late.

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I Retail, you Retail, we Re-Store

In 2020, e-commerce sales accounted over 15.5% of retail sales worldwide. In terms of purchases 1 in 4 occurred online, in 2021 is estimated the year-over-year increase at 4,4% (source: Statista).

A growing number of commentators and studies agree on the downsizing of the “Retail Apocalypse” scenario in favor of a radical paradigm change, already underway, which redefines some basic concepts, as Luca Innocenzi effectively analyzed in the article “Retail e COVID – speranze e strategie“.

The reality is that, in any case, even in the worst and least probable scenario, Retail will still represent the most important slice of turnover for most brands. It will remain at the center of business strategies and if anything trying to “unite per osmosis ”online, through cultural reconversion projects within the company and sensible investments in the context of omnichannel-oriented integration.

Retail is not over, it just needs to be rethought.

Starting from this assumption, the most shrewd Retailer can only choose to start a path of knowledge and awareness, first of all wondering what are the practices and tools that can be “borrowed” from online and specific benefits that can derive from them.

Now let’s try to ask ourselves this question: is it permissible in 2021 that any ecommerce site can do without an Analytics Data Driven system? (for example Google Analytics just to name one of the most popular).

Clearly not, not even the most irrelevant ecommerce site would consider it an option.

An analytics system provides increasingly in-depth and articulated metrics: number of accesses to the site, content seen, days, hours, locations, devices, gender, age group and other relevant characteristics of the audience. These tools became part of our daily life, explaining to us in detail who our customers are, what they expect and if they appreciate our initiatives and our products.

Why do we consider them fundamental to develop 15.5% (on average) of turnover and for the remaining 84.5% we perhaps just aggregate statistics on sales or use trivial instruments?

Logically (and depending on a budget), we should first of all worry about overseeing that 84.5%, studying it, protecting it, understanding it if possible and developing it in a “customer oriented” perspective, as we normally do on the e-commerce site.

So why does it still happen so timidly among large retailers? Leaving aside all the secondary reasons, it happens for two kinds of reasons.

1 – implementing an analytics system on an ecommerce site is relatively cheap

It is a simple calculation: if to implement an online data driven strategy it is necessary to spend a lot, hire specialists, consultants, invest in platforms etc, the cost is unique, its impact on ROI compares entirely with that 15.5% in revenues, presumably growing.

On the other side, the monitoring of each individual physical store cannot be centralized, has internal costs and the overall investment is, at least, the sum of those of each individual store. For this reason, it is essential that the cost of adoption and possession for a single store is sufficiently low to be comparable. Once aggregated, with the online one, on the basis of a proportion that compares the levels of overall turnover and does not neglect to consider the additional advantages deriving from the union of the two datasets within a single omnichannel Business Intelligence ecosystem.

Let’s take an example:

If total turnover is 100, and Google Analytics contributes in a decisive way to produce an average increase of 4.4% per year on the online, the utility threshold of the investment will have to remain as widely as possible below 2-3%. of that 15.5% of online turnover, to ensure a positive ROI.

The rational retailer will be willing to invest a maximum amount between 0.31 and 0.465.

2 – the data production tools have not proven themselves

Once the relevance and value perimeter of this instruments has been clarified, the topic shifts to availability: Are there any instruments that can guarantee data consistency, total costs of ownership below the ROI threshold levels, low impact on processes and infrastructure costs while ensuring data readability, protection of customer privacy, opening up to different technological ecosystems, extending the scope of intervention to contexts such as Smart Digital Signage and user experience, all integrated into a single platform?

Well, I’m not going to answer this question, because I guess you did it yourself.

COVID-19 and Infodemic: the two global challenges for the world of research

The spread of COVID-19 has led researchers and companies around the world to speed up innovation and exploration of areas with a huge potential for technological evolution.
The areas of challenge are mainly oriented to mitigate transmission, facilitate the detection of the virus, understand the social and economic impact and define new behavioural patterns, new systems to regulate transactions, to deliver products and to improve efficiency of services.

The number of scientist and researchers active today in every part of the world to face the pandemic is very consistent. It is noteworthy that many scientific papers on the topic Covid have numerous and interesting connections with topics such as “machine learning“, “artificial intelligence“, “deep learning“, and “neural network“.

COVID-19: The fields of application of AI in medicine

Artificial intelligence finds its applications both in medical and social field. We should not forget that the main factor of spreading for COVID-19 is represented by sociality and contact with other people.

In medical field, for example, machine learning is used to understand the level of infectivity of SARS-Cov-2

In summary:

- parts of coronavirus’ protein sequences that are most associated with high case fatality rate (high-CFR) are identified

- machine learning is used to implement an interpretive technique that will allow the identification of similar cases with a high "potential".
Another example is the monitoring techniques that makes use of Computer Imaging techniques.

Medical images of COVID-19 cases (x-rays such as x-rays chest or kidney function test charts) are classified and used to identify other cases, help doctors to interpret the course of the infection and act in a preventive manner.

This information is also a further source of research and learning that can easily be pooled to develop new strategies to combat the pandemic.

Infodemic: a threat that comes from the web

Artificial intelligence can also be applied to assess virus containment models and public policy choices.

For example, we can identify similarities or differences in the evolution of the pandemic between different regions and the connections with the propagation of disinformation, antisocial behaviour or hate campaigns.

These interpretative strategies based on information and language monitoring have made it possible to detect another type of social virus linked to language and information. Let’s talk about what has been called “infodemic*"

The experts have identified an Infodemic Risk Index (IRI), to quantify and understand the exposure rate of a country or region to messages associated with the phenomena of hatred and infodemic conveyed through the main social platforms. The identification of trends in conversations and the identification and classification of the main sources (verified users, reliable or institutional sources, bots or users that, in relation to the high number of posts and type of content, can be considered as unreliable) allows to contain the risks of a further expansion of COVID-19 linked to negative behaviour and misinformation.

The World Health Organization is proactively observing the phenomenon of infodemic because it is closely linked to the course of the pandemic and has important implications for the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

COVID-19 and Infodemic can advance proportionally and with close correlations and for this reason once again the role of Tech Giant becomes crucial and controversial.

*Infodemic: an over-abundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it” and deems it a second “disease” which needs fighting (WHO)

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Natural user interfaces and new languages

Human-computer interfaces are changing the way real-world experiences take place.
When we want to establish an interaction between man and machine, we see cognitive questions taking place on both sides: machine and man. On the one hand the machine is required to understand on the basis of what previously learned (machine learning), on the other hand man is required to limit and simplify the language and interactions using voice commands, tactile and gestural without any interpretative variant. Smart speakers, which have now became very popular, or other ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) are based on grammar, lexical terms and acoustic recognition modules, these systems have taught us to express ourselves in a simplified way.
The success of these ASR tools is due to the fact that users can interact directly with the computer without using an intermediate device (eg, mouse, keyboard), without particular technological expertise, actually reducing the grammatical structure of language and lexical quality to the absolute essentials.

It is not a coincidence that even babies, just one year old, can interact with these tools and from different fronts has raised the doubt that these tools can give rise to cognitive or behavioural distortions. Others wonder how children interact with this type of technology, how these tools can affect baby’s development and the quality of their interactions with people, others study the way children try to conceptualise these tools, for example by imagining that there are small people inside or that they are objects with a personality.

But let’s leave this discussion to psychologists and educationalist and let’s go back to the center of our theme: how natural users interfaces can improve the way we experience the real world?

The naturalness with which children are able to interact with these systems actually leads us to reflect on a critical success factor that characterises the systems based on NUI design, this bring us to an assumption that we can formulate as follows: The more the interface looks natural, the more you can hope that there is a spontaneous adoption or a fruition without unexpected or friction.

The first question to be asked in the design of these NUI-based instruments is the nature of these interactions (vocal or gesture): which interactions can be considered natural? The "naturalness" of gesture-based interfaces very often configures and manifests itself effectively when interpreting actions that the individual naturally performs to manipulate an object physically (e.g.: swipe). Then there are gestures that we can define arbitrary but used widely (e.g.: like, thumbs up).

These are just some of the aspects that compete in the design of a system based on AI and NUI but for all the real test remains linked to the ability to trigger a fluid experience, correct and without cognitive efforts. This scenario brings us back to the possibility of reducing the behavioural exceptions in the experiences offered in a store or in a public space and thus reducing the management costs of these exceptions.
We use the body as a tool to generate basic information: presence or our absence for instance. This simple information produces an automated reaction (for example opening, closing, switching on, switching off, etc…). But when the body, movements and gestures generate more complex and comprehensible information for NUI and AI-based systems, we can talk about language, that language that no longer produces simple automated reactions but real collaborative interactions with machines. Systems based on AI and NUI applied to the real context allow to promote virtuous changes especially in situations such as the one we are living in where individual responsibility must be accompanied by a constant behavioural education. AI and NUI based systems also allow to detect, correct and discipline behavioural anomalies.

Interacting with the world now also means interacting with the digital world, it paradoxically means being present simultaneously in two spaces, the real and the digital one where our presence and our interactions, appropriately codified, can be observed and interpreted.

Without venturing into the daring undertaking of combining quantum mechanics with digital, we can be satisfied with a clear perception that derives from new experiences induced by the speed of communications, from accessibility to information, the need to reduce contact and presence in the physical world. It is clear that we are increasingly inclined to interact and use multiple and different dimensions, we are increasingly accustomed to omni-channel and multilevel experiences, and we are experiencing dimensions that need to be understood, coded and "exploited".

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Retail technology with safety and quality indicators

The pandemic has redefined countless parameters that previously regulated quality standards of service or experience. What is effectively a tough challenge for companies is also a unique opportunity for retailers to reconnect with consumers in new ways.
– enabling omnichannel technologies in store
– apply measurement criteria to the environment within which the experience takes place.

In this scenario Munogu designed Space Saver, a technology that helps to manage in store social distance and at the same time analyzes quality and performance of the environment.

The Business Intelligence system integrated in Space Saver is aimed at achieving the following objectives:

collect actionable data: data collected by space sensors placed in the environment (office or shop) are pre-processed and then sent to the aggregator which in turn, on a daily basis, makes them available as Json like data source for BI system.
The data source is then analyzed by BI to provide a "dashboard" from which you can quickly obtain key information selecting geographic clusters, tags of groups of stores, individual shops and/or specific time ranges.
extendibility and integrability: the information structure of data sources and the Json like approach allow the use of data sources also in external contexts, for example in other BI systems (Kibana, Data Studio, Klipfolio, Tableau, etc...).
decoupling of the BI system from the data production platform: the infrastructural separation of the system that produces aggregated data sources and the data production process mitigate the entropy. This approach allow to modify the adapters system without impacting the service delivery system.

TCO containment and scalability: the pre-processing activity allows the efficiency of the data aggregation process, this means a peer-to-peer-inspired design that allows a reduction of the central processing costs and an improvement of the fault tolerance even if one of the nodes (office or shop) is temporarily unavailable.
creation of a proactive reporting system: in addition to the BI system for specific and extemporaneous investigations, it is possible to set up a system of "triggers" (cd. "dynamic reporting") that allows the BI system to send, periodically and independently, specific notices on the most significant trends associated with KPIs and to suggest coded "next best actions".

Let’s look at the "value" elements of the Space Saver suite in terms of significant and measurable contribution to the improvement of business activities, with reference to:

- environmental productivity indicators (informative contribution).
- efficiency of service and support staff (process contribution).
- moral suasion strategies (cognitive contribution).
Space saver’s Indicators design is driven by the goal of providing practical and relevant tools for making critical decisions in a data-driven context.

Instantaneous and periodic generation of environmental productivity indices

The Business Intelligence system integrated in the Space Saver suite provides retailers with the following indicators:

TUI productivity index (Utilization Rate): identify environments ( e.g., shops or offices) with differential performance (best/worst) in terms of the ability to manage the inflow and journey of customers and to standardise an assessment process of the economic exploitation of spaces.
What decisions help us to make?
TUI informs us, with a "journey centred" approach of which shops are most under pressure in terms of inflow.
IDS Security Index (Social Distance Index): identify environments with criticality (best/worst) related to social distance policies.
What decisions help us to make?
TUI IDS informs us, with a "journey centred" approach of which UP have the most critical issues in terms of compliance with the policies on physical distance and the relative degree of such violations, enabling us to intervene specifically in the areas where risk occurred.
Safety productivity index TUI-IDS
Identify environments with critical performance in terms of the balance between store performance and the ability to manage social distancing policies.
What decisions help us to make?
TUI-IDS informs us, with a "journey centred" approach, of which store record the highest/lowest number of violations of the rules on distance and whether these are attributable to an underdimensioning of the store compared to potential users or other factors (poor care of care staff, poor cultural propensity to follow the rules, etc.).

Efficient contribution to service and service value

With the adoption of Space Saver services, the aim is to encourage the work of service or assistance staff in the shop and to equip themselves with the tools to assess their effectiveness without impacting on the prerogatives and procedures that are already implemented at the point of sale.
The optimization levers are:

evaluation: to create a tool for assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of the operator’s action.
motivation: the operator, aware of the monitoring programme, is likely to be pushed to improve his performance, the possible use of moral and/or economic gratification programs could also add elements of gamification capable of triggering further virtuous patterns in terms of impact on the operator’s commitment.
tools: equipping the operator with new intervention tools and support to his activity
automation: the partial automation in hazards reporting processes and access rules introduced with Space Saver allow a lightening of the pressure on the operator, an objectification of his intervention and the partial elimination of a series of interventions that expose the operator to proximity to customers.

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Minimize physical contact and maximize contactless interactions

Minimize physical contact and maximize contactless intraction is the main objective of organizations.
This priority concerns many sectors and we are experiencing a deep change never seen before with linked implications at all levels.
The rising attention on risks about privacy and cybersecurity for instance are consequences of a massive transition from actions based on physical contact and presence to touchless and digitized actions, such as voice recognition and face recognition through computer vision.

This forced transition has brought a huge evangelization about advantages due to the adoption of touchless technologies, we can count a large party of enthusiastic adopters and an equal large party of individuals worried about data protection and privacy.
Technologies based on computer vision and AI collect images, interactions and voices from real world, and transform them into data, therefore the data processing is always under the critical question: will the data be processed according to honesty principles, lawfulness and transparency for the protection of privacy?
In Italy for instance despite of a good willingness to adopt touchless practices and technologies in the future, it keep on lasting a strong opposition toward facial recognition, unless strictly necessary for identification process.

A recent research by Capgemini attests that 55% of consumer consumers would avoid a store if it was using facial recognition to identify them and 66% of consumer prefer to use mobile apps at physical locations such as stores and bank branches instead of touch-based alternatives.
To keep users satisfied with technologies over time and to undermine understandable distrust of computer vision-based recognition technologies, it is important that companies are committed to maintaining high quality and relevant experiences, in few words companies should work to offer a tangible value to the customer.

Another interesting fact is that the behavior based on non-touch practices will remain even after the pandemic emergency because the advantages of these solutions have been grasped (vocal interfaces, facial recognition, mobile-based applications).

Implementing and adopting large-scale technologies that meet this public demand requires a long-term vision and strategic plan with two imperatives:
- adopt a test and learn approach
- adopt a data-driven approach
The real change that is expected is therefore in the organizations.
Monitoring the experience and learning and collecting data is as crucial as observation of people’s behavior, the way in which people welcome new interaction solutions can be measured and analyzed and, on the basis of this constant practice, it is possible to gather insights to guide future choices and improvements to be implemented in the adoption strategy of these technologies.

*Capgemini Research Institute, Consumer Survey, April 2020, N=4,818 consumers

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Changing the customer experience approach with innovative retail concepts

A recent Nielsen research highlights new socio-economic and behavioral patterns that are helping to redefine strategies and retail concept: basket reset, homebody reset, rationale reset and affordability reset. These parameters tell us that people are changing priorities and this evidence will necessarily have to lead retailers to rethink strategies and reshape the purchasing experience.

Online and offline environment merging is an evolutionary necessity for retail and benefits related to this integration have been widely processed during pandemic in many situation and use cases, such as: planning online the store visit, pre-order to arrange the in store pickup or to get a personalized service, and so on.

Online and offline integration allows also to pay attention to the importance of loyalty and bespoke experiences and people are appreciating brands that are addressing their focus in this direction.
1 to 1 marketing is no longer a prerogative of offline contexts but digital humanities and complex algorithm are enabling a deep knowledge of customer and a quite fluid interaction between customers and brands.

People have raised the bar of perception regarding the quality of experience and require to have the possibility to carry out part of the purchase process via mobile or through digital and touch-less tools.

As an effect of the pandemic typical digital ways of interactions have been brought into real life and we finally appreciated the value and usefulness of the technologies which previously had little adoption. The QR code has finally revealed its true value proving to be a perfect and immediate bridge between physical and digital that can facilitate the digitization of all those physical media that can be vectors of contagion (menus, tickets, brochures, guides, etc..)
QR code is also the first point of contact in Burger King’s new touchless concept store that will see its first openings in 2021 in Miami and Latin America.
The new concept was created to meet two important and necessary evolutionary objectives:
- React to customers' behavior changes with an adaptive approach
- Resize shops

Emerging innovative retail concepts

In the new Burger King touchless concept store, touch points and face to face interactions have been replaced with digital and touchless solutions. The new retail concept provides a deep integration between online and offline.

The shop, its spaces, have been entirely redesigned with functional and safe approach, the kitchens have been placed into the funnel according to a delivery logic perfectly connected with a food locker system that effectively closes the experience with automated orders delivery.

Burger King’s new concept store is 60% smaller than a standard Burger King and therefore allows a significant cost reduction at a time when the change in behavior and consumption is constantly evolving.
The new Burger King will also reduce massively the time spent by the public by improving the perception of safety and probably increasing the efficiency and speed of service deliver.

The retail innovation intersects with a great opportunity related to data economy.
Data mining becomes automated even in physical spaces and there is an appreciable adoption of automatic systems for the analysis of flows and customers' behavior.
The real-time generation of data is increasingly linked to the interaction between man and machine, but the crucial point of this interaction is always the experience offered.
The so-called digital humanities that provide visual and textual analysis and powerful research tools represent the most important evolutionary challenge for all those services that put the experience as their differentiating point.

Omnichannel scenario has brought an evolutionary momentum also in digital technologies that try to rival the real experience leading to very daring experiments ranging from the use of "avatars" to hyper-real representations of 3D spaces within which it is possible to move room after room as in reality or as in a Minecraft style game.
For example, Diesel has launched its Hyperoom, a virtual space where vendors and buyers are welcomed and the brand offer an immersive experience that allows them to explore and visualize products in every detail.
At the moment it is a project reserved for the community of operators but could also be extended to customers as a new e-commerce platform.

This is certainly a courageous approach consistent with the commitment declared by the OTB, the group headed by the Diesel brand that in its manifesto focuses on the will to innovate, change people behavior, stimulate creativity contribute to social development and support a sustainable economy.

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What happens when AI reach the tipping point?

In the last few years we have seen that social change and consumption behaviour are often characterised by an extraordinary speed in spreading and are able to turn into global phenomena.
From a behavioural point of view, some trends, supported by powerful marketing strategies, have became viral and this feature is very timely and not casual.

The spread of a trend, whether it is fashion, entertainment or lifestyle, leads to intensify the activity of people in some specific areas, physical or virtual, concurrently increases the demand for products and services connected to that trend and also the spreading factor of the trend itself.
As Malcolm Gladwell explains in the book The tipping point, once reached the tipping point, you reach that threshold beyond which you can get an avalanche effect.

The gap between supply and demand is no longer an eligible cost as we are now in a time when it is possible to predict how demand will change over time and implement adaptive supply strategies. Predictive business strategies combined with a knowledge of the audience and its behavior are conditions that are determining the success of some realities and the disappearance of others from the market.
Knowing how to grasp, control and respond in a timely and automated way, to emerging questions or to the change in demand behaviour is one of the most important challenges for retail.

The automation of retail processes affects many aspects ranging from the retail and product experience to post-purchase phase and customer care.

Real-time audience analytics, digital shelf strips, interactive surfaces and touch-less interfaces: that’s the way is changing the approach to shape the retail experience.

Automated experiences and retail automation

Automated experiences and retail automation seems to be more and more applied to a wide range of products and services.
Radars, cameras, voice recognition and weight sensors are only some of the solutions adopted to acquire a deep knowledge about context and audiences. This means that control, categorise and analyse is a pattern to generate a chain of events predictable and measurable to perform the retail automation.

This may suggest that, in a daily regime of automated actions and responses, in order to make the services efficient, there is a risk of making the human experience entangled or filtered though safe and performing.

Artificial intelligence and implications on behaviour and society

We might think that coding experience in patterns recognisable also for artificial intelligence is leading us to adapt our language to facilitate and support this dialogue with machines. In order to make machine able to recognize and respond to simple or quite complex commands we must somehow transform verbal, gestural and vocal language into metalanguages able to be associated with information and translatable therefore in answers and results.

The integration between the digital and the real world is now fully in place and it is constantly evolving, moreover the training accelerated by the pandemic has produced a vast evangelization of the benefits brought by digitalisation and virtual transposition of some experiences.
It is beyond any doubt that, in emergency situations, digital and virtual are the preferred as well as reasonable way, but before handing over the experience to an automation lived in everyday life it is sensible to make some more reflection.

Pros and cons in experience automation

When the experience is automated by an efficient relationship of dialogue between machine and man the result can be certainly a benefit. These are situations where real-time information is required for efficient management of passenger traffic, situations where it is necessary to preserve specific environmental qualities or situations where it is necessary to reduce the presence of man or his impact on the environment.
Sharing information, acting in a procedural and collaborative way is something that can be reproduced or replicated by a machine and can bring obvious benefits.
Behaving with empathy is a precious attitude that can hardly be attributed to a machine.

When the experience becomes automated without a real pro-social aim presumably we are faced with a controlled and simplified experience moved by disparate purposes ranging from entertainment to pure distraction not properly useful for those who are experiencing it.

Wanting to add a provocative touch but not far from pure reality, we can say that automated experience can also have the purpose of generating data through people.
Such data, as a trace of people involvement become monetizable because these data have the intrinsic power to multiply exponentially on the basis of emotional factors.

And here we are at what may be considered, with discrete and desirable limits, not fully automatizable and that will always have a slight form of resistance to the most efficient prediction strategy: emotions, events, events, real life.

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“Which brand will be the first to exploit the potential of this trend, making it an important opportunity to grow its business? “

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Which other instrument guarantees better remote access to products and services, if not the web?

But is this really the case?

This innovation process must start with the implementation of new technologies for retail analytics.

Start your omniexperience revolution today, as tomorrow it will be too late.

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Retail is not over, it just needs to be rethought.

So why does it still happen so timidly among large retailers? Leaving aside all the secondary reasons, it happens for two kinds of reasons.

Well, I’m not going to answer this question, because I guess you did it yourself.

COVID-19: The fields of application of AI in medicine

Infodemic: a threat that comes from the web

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Instantaneous and periodic generation of environmental productivity indices

Efficient contribution to service and service value

Strategies of moral suasion (cognitive contribution)

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Emerging innovative retail concepts

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Automated experiences and retail automation

Artificial intelligence and implications on behaviour and society

Pros and cons in experience automation

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