Optimising inventory, in-store experience critical for retailers in 2023

Having products that a customer wants is crucial. It’s the core of what a retailer is about. Both in-store and digital customers rated product availability and selection as the top two reasons they chose to shop at a particular physical or digital retail location, indicated Zebra’s ‘15th Annual Global Shopper Study’.

Besides getting the obvious need to place the right orders in 2023 retailers will need to take a comprehensive view of inventory across several key dimensions in on-shelf availability. The goal is to move up the retail maturity model across dimensions from manual to tech-enabled processes, and ultimately to guided, automated systems.

Inventory trends to watch in 2023

We can expect ‘RFID everywhere’: RFID technology in the retail store environment has been around for years but evolutions in the tag size, cost and printability are driving new, high-value use cases that are poised to take off.

Digital twins, especially smart shelves, are another way retailers can keep track of exactly what is in their stores. The physical sensors are combined with machine learning technologies for product detection, dynamic pricing and customer sensing. Over time, these will be foundational for the cashier-less store, but in 2023, the sweet spot of innovation will be around inventory management.

AI/ML-based data patterns and actioning: Retailers for years have looked inward to their own point of sale and inventory management systems to look for issues and opportunities. What’s emerging for 2023, however, is turning this exception-based reporting into more robust actions. In 2023, these systems will have fewer reports, but better prioritisation and vectors for real-time actions.

Optimising CX

Another key trend emerging from the lockdown and gradual reopening is large increases in the number of consumers willing to try new and different in-store consumer technologies such as contactless payments, self-checkout, ‘anywhere checkout,’ smart carts and digital kiosks.

Further, consumers overwhelmingly signal a desire to make the store experience fast and efficient that presents an opportunity for retailers to invest in technologies that both improve the jobs for their front-line workers, and profitably improve the customer experience.

CX trends to look for in 2023

At the top of the maturity model for smart checkouts are various technologies to recognise all selected products, sum up the basket and provide a total, apply loyalty or promotional benefits, identify the consumer and tender payment. While this will not be mainstream yet in 2023, there are steps retailers can take next year to start to reap the benefit.

Another less complex but high value area to lean into in 2023 is a rock-solid ship to home option. In our recent shopper study, more than 80% of retail decision-makers rated their options for dealing with an out-of-stock as satisfactory, but less than 60% of consumers thought so. Consumer’s first choice when the product they want is not available was an easy way to have it shipped to their home later but far too often this was not what associates were offering.

Another key trend identified by our recent shopper study is that customers often have better tools and data than store employees. A high return on investment way to solve this in 2023 is company-provided devices for front-line workers that allow them to check inventory, prices, loyalty options, answering customer questions, executing on out-of-stock options as well as operational uses such as shelf maintenance and training.

It feels a bit like the only certainty is uncertainty for retailers today. As retail becomes even more complex and shopper behaviours continue to change, new challenges and opportunities arise for retailers to better know their stock, associates and customers – and optimise all three

By Hozefa Saylawala Director of Sales, Zebra Technologies