In our current age of technology, it seems like everything is going at the speed of light. AI is turning into an arms race between the most powerful governments in the world. Multi-billion dollar acquistions are being made every other week for bigger data centers and more GPUs. AI-powered tooth brushes (yes, really). And yet, there are still industry moving inversely at the speed of light, the most notable of which being grocery retailers. While everyone else is using AI to optimise every activity in their value chain, grocery stores are using the same systems from the 1980s, and relying on processes that were only fit for the early 2010s. Amongst the most neglected being in-store marketing.
Despite living in a time where advertising and marketing is more important than ever, grocery stores still rely on traditional marketing processess. Although there were some improvements made with digital signage, by the time a campaign is produced, the consumer behaviour, seasonal trend and inventory that was informing the creation of the campaign would eventually become irrelevant. This inefficiency leads not only to loss of potential sales, but food waste from spoiled food.
ShelfSense was created to tackle this issue. ShelfSense is an AI-powered ad campaign generation tool that helps grocery retailers reduce marketing costs, increase unrealized sales and prevent food waste. It monitors real-time data such as weather, season, time, temperature, inventory, consumer trends and more to inform our fine-tuned model to generate an ad campaign for the grocery store. Every month, our model is returns to the fine-tune process to create a feedback loop where the model can learn from its own campaigns and assess which ones worked and which ones did not.
ShelfSense allows grocery store retailers to reap the biggest benefit of AI-integration: automation and optimization. Currently, marketing teams spend days or weeks to bring a campaign from ideation to publication. In the middle of this process, they have to coordinate with multiple stakeholder such as management, IT departments, and third party creative agencies. Even then, by the time the ad is live, it become irrelvant due to the ever changing market environment. With ShelfSense, the ad creation cycle reduces from days/weeks to minutes, leaving marketers extra time to focus on more important activities like strategic planning. Additionally, ShelfSense creates campaigns that is real-time and data driven. It will generate campaigns that are optimised for conversion considering the relevant market data and inventory. Finally, it can prioritise promotion of soon-to-be expired inventory goods, which addresses the key sustainability issue of food waste.
Since the industrial revolution, grocery stores have been the backbone of societies. An abundance of food all in one place is something we take for granted. In an ever changing world, it is often these essential brick-and-mortar stores that tend to lag behind, but with ShelfSense, grocery stores can also enjoy the benefits of AI, one item at a time.
Students: Rajan Sapkota (788338rs), Simon Skarka (657510ss), Floris van Zeijl (585810fz)
