Retail Analytics in the New Normal: The Influence of Artificial Intelligence and the Covid-19 Pandemic
It addresses retail challenges during the pandemic, but is incremental as it discusses adapting existing AI methods to new disruptions.
The paper examines how AI can help retailers adapt to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as panic buying and online-offline synergies, by applying or developing AI techniques like retraining predictive models.
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted the retail landscape and has accelerated the adoption of innovative technologies. A striking example relates to the proliferation of online grocery orders and the technology deployed to facilitate such logistics. In fact, for many retailers, this disruption was a wake-up call after which they started recognizing the power of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, we discuss the opportunities that AI can offer to retailers in the new normal retail landscape. Some of the techniques described have been applied at scale to adapt previously deployed AI models, whereas in other instances, fresh solutions needed to be developed to help retailers cope with recent disruptions, such as unexpected panic buying, retraining predictive models, and leveraging online-offline synergies.