By Hozefa Attari and Saad Khan

Is it still business as usual or Day One for retail? Here are five ways retail can use the technology marinade to cook a new customer experience.

1. Connected Packaging

Packaging was conceived simply as a carrier of products and has been passive over many years. Now, packaging can be the newest media front. Coupled with artificial intelligence and a smartphone, today packaging can create infinite and immersive experiences. An image, or a code, outside or inside the pack can trigger almost anything, from engaging customers through gamification to actually using it to create direct reward or loyalty programs.

2. Segments Of One With AI.

One size fits all is stone-age marketing. Today, with AI and analytics at the centre, each consumer is a segment in itself. Thus retail marketers can create hyper customised loyalty programs, promotions or curated store views basis view history and past purchases.

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3. With Augmented Reality, Touch Goes Out Of The Window.

Consumers are caught between safety and the old habit of picking up products to check nutrition facts or expiry dates. Augmented reality allows shoppers to simply open their cameras, point them at the product and get all the relevant information and content they seek on their phones.

4. Half Store. Half App.

The future is lean. With rising real estate costs, Big Box retail is shrinking. Technology can enable slimming of stores without losing revenue. Aisles don’t need to be loaded with all SKUs. Interactive catalogues can store thousands of products. One click and it can land in the shopping cart and get delivered home. Contactless checkouts can reduce checkout counters and time. Small is here to stay.

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5. Cooking New Dishes, But Not getting The Ingredients.

With time at hand and gigabytes of recipes available online, people are refining their cooking skills. But often they are not able to find all the ingredients either in their kitchens or at the neighbourhood store. Tech can come to rescue by simply inserting a ‘shop the recipe’ button right into the content. Click the link and the entire ingredient list directly goes to the cart.

To sum it up, tech enabled solutions can give an edge to grocery retail brands. New solutions can be beta tested in limited geography before a big rollout, thus letting brands experiment more to learn more.

Attari is the co-founder of Networkbay, and Khan is the national planning director, FCB Ulka. Views expressed are personal.

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