🤔 AI has come to IKEA.

“Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.” — Gertrude Stein

Maybe they should go to IKEA. I’ve been told it’s great.

In today’s newsletter:

• AI has come to IKEA

• Paper

• Learn

Pense

I’ve never been in an IKEA store. 😱

But they are launching self-service kiosks in their stores. So, naturally I now want to go see if it stands up to the hype.

Plus it’s just like a DIY store to come more DIY. The question is will it still be a better DIY experience than other stores?

These are not checkout registers but place customers can go look up and order products. Considering the $100B lost in self-checkout each year this is a much better decision. IKEA has learned from the failures of retailers that jumped on that hype cycle. Hopefully, this will be a good bet on their part.

Read more here.

Paper

Leveraging In-Store Technology and AI: Increasing Customer and Employee Efficiency and Enhancing their Experiences

This paper provides good overview of in-store technology. Here’s some key points:

• Retailers want to provide an omnichannel experience through increasing efficiency of employees. After all, labor is pricey and can’t be every where at once. For simple tasks, AI could fill the gap.

• The robots are coming. This means were going to need robot mechanics… I don’t think this has been thought out yet. I’d expected an increase in cost.

• Employees are getting wearables. I find it a bit creepy but may be it will help improve safety.

Read more here.

Learn

Looks like this may be interesting