In modern retail, one crucial task is monitoring the presence, placement, and pricing of products on store shelves. This affects customer satisfaction, loyalty, staff efficiency, and inventory management effectiveness. Traditional methods like visual inspection, inventory checks, or barcode scanning can be labor-intensive, inaccurate, and costly.
To address these challenges, AI Shelf Recognition programs have been developed. This innovative solution utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision (CV) to automatically detect and analyze products on store shelves.
Here’s how it works:
- Cameras installed above shelves or mobile devices used by staff or customers capture images of shelves from various angles and distances.
- Using AI and CV algorithms, the program processes these images to identify products, their brands, categories, sizes, colors, shapes, and other characteristics.
- Leveraging a database containing product information, prices, planograms, promotions, and other parameters, the program matches recognized products with relevant data and identifies issues like product absence, incorrect placement, mismatched pricing labels, packaging damage, etc.
- Through an interface presented as a web app, mobile app, dashboard, report, or notification, the program provides shelf analysis results and recommendations for improvement to stakeholders such as managers, staff, customers, suppliers, or auditors.
AI Shelf Recognition programs offer several benefits for retailers:
- Increased sales and profitability by improving product availability, attractiveness, and competitiveness on shelves, and reducing losses and excess inventory.
- Cost and risk reduction through optimized work time, resource management, and shelf monitoring processes, as well as improved accuracy, speed, and reliability of control.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing up-to-date, comprehensive, and accurate information about shelf products, and allowing interaction via mobile devices for additional information, discounts, reviews, etc.
- Improved reputation and image by demonstrating innovation, technological advancement, and responsibility to customers, employees, partners, and society.
AI Shelf Recognition programs represent a promising solution that could become a standard in modern retail. However, successful implementation and use require consideration of business specifics, customer needs and expectations, and the selection of high-quality, suitable technologies, platforms, and providers.
