03Retail· UX Team

The cashier is dead

ScienceProbability 97/100

// A story from 2051

Dieudonné sips his morning coffee – an Ethiopean blend made with caffeine-free beans recommended to him by the RoboDietician in aisle 4 and looks at the giant screen in front of him. As the general manager of a 4-storey gigamarket in the centre of town, he loves to start his day with lots of green on the dashboard, as it means his work will be a breeze – at least until lunchtime. That’s not the case today. There is a bit of orange blinking in the far-right corner of his screen and an ugly red dot smack dab in the middle. He taps the keyboard of his HoverChair to bring it closer to his desk, where the brakes automatically lock the perfect distance away from his screen.

Dieudonné fights the urge to roll his eyes. He knows from experience that the orange dot signifies a problem with the salmon supply – again. When will shoppers finally understand it’s 2051, salmon is an endangered species and the quotas for fishing it are lower than ever? With a few quick clicks on the dashboard, he activates the automated solution from his Price Management System. An AI-generated promotion on haddock is instantly displayed on the in-store screens, incentivising shoppers interested in salmon to buy another type of fish for supper. An automatic notification is then sent to the RoboDietician in the seafood court to let her know of the shortage; she will adapt her proposals to shoppers accordingly. And of course, the electric price tags for both types of fish in the fridges are immediately changed as well. Later this evening, before going home after closing time, Dieudonné will – out of habit – check if these products’ prices have been altered on the outdoor LCD screens and vending machine for late night shoppers.

With the fish issue quickly solved, Dieudonné now turns his attention to the red dot. He reads the description of the problem. There is no automated solution possible. This is why he still comes to work every day, for things only a human can solve. Using the keypad once again, he programmes the HoverChair to go down to the store. Then he spins around and heads for the lift.

Gliding out on the ground floor next to the gigamarket entrance, Dieudonné looks to the left. The store’s only two tills are manned by humanoid robots that pack groceries and pretend to smile for clients who need the interaction. Dieudonné misses his favourite cashier, Miss Imani. She was so warm and friendly, always helpful. When she retired, planning her goodbye party was hard. Replacing her with a humanoid made more sense financially, as it could do what she did, but also gather and analyse real-time data about shoppers checking out. This data is now instantly fed directly into the cloud where it is combined with other data from his store to fuel the algorithms in his prediction software.

Dieudonné glides past the fruit and vegetables aisle. His HoverChair swerves rather abruptly for a kid in AR glasses playing a game with an invisible Hello Kitty. The kid’s mother is distracted by a conversation with the aisle’s RoboDietician over the amount of carbs in a banana versus an avocado. Dieudonné doesn’t mind. He knows these branded AR experiences always create an uplift in overall footfall of over 23% for the day. He glides on to the dairy fridges. The screens above the fridges light up when he passes, showing how the packaging of perishables has improved in his gigamarket.

A bit further, he passes a senior comparing a piece of lab-grown meat with a vegan alternative by simply holding up the products in front of his phone with the app of his gigamarket open. The senior nods, puts the vegan product back and walks towards the wine section. There, a young couple uses the touchscreen table to pair the perfect bottle with the recipe for the meal they plan to cook this evening for friends. One of them is allergic to sulfates, so they fuss over the right wine for the right price. Dieudonné knows that – with the ingredients for the meal already in their cart – the system will recognise this and reward them with a personalised coupon for an entire carton of sulfate-free white wine nearing its ‘best-by’ date.

Finally, Dieudonné arrives at the cause of the red dot on his dashboard: the frozen goods section. The dashboard had warned of a spike in energy usage in this area. He checks if all the doors of the freezer section close properly, then looks for puddles that might indicate a broken part somewhere. It takes him until lunchtime to figure out and manually fix the problem. When he returns to his dashboard, all he sees is a satisfying sea of green on the screen.

// The science behind it

Supersized megamarkets with autonomous AI and entertainment in AR - really?

For the immediate future, technology will not hugely impact our everyday experience as shoppers. But make no mistake, it will be there, embedded into the workings of our favourite grocery stores. Due to advances made in AI and Machine Learning, footfall forecasting, dynamic pricing and supply chain management will be highly automated, requiring only a single person to oversee the process on a central dashboard.

Soon, self-checkout will be the norm. Most tills will disappear, with customers automatically charged as they exit the store. Some retailers will still incorporate robot-cashiers for a more human experience, and for customers who prefer the feedback of a once in-flesh-cashier repeating the total cost of the groceries and wishing them a good day before they exit.

This will make cashier jobs a thing of the past but will also make space for new vacancies. Pricing of goods will be determined and updated instantly and adapted automatically across multiple channels. The most popular products will be continuously on display, made possible only because real-time AI collects information on supply and automatically regulates orders as stocks run out. Data-based predictions will become imperative, like determining seasonal product demands based on last year’s data – in combination with data from social listening (scraping data around ingredients and recipes, for example). With all these tasks automated and autonomously performed, human store managers will evolve into market researchers and adverse event agents. They’ll be paid to react fast whenever there’s an unpredictable occurrence, like a sudden major flooding of the premises due to rain.

With efficiency of supermarkets at an all-time high, attention will turn back towards increasing the number of products per basket. In each food aisle, we may encounter a dedicated food expert, or dietician, who will help us towards product choices best suited to our needs. Less privacy-cautious shoppers and those pressed for time will simply press their smart watches against a touchscreen table for a better insight into their individual health and conditions – with personalised shopping proposals and promotions immediately offered. With a simple click, a shopping list is sent to their phones and the corresponding coupons sent to their digital wallet.

Shoppers will not only be encouraged to spend more money but also more time in their favourite supermarket. The key to this is the enhancement of the shopping experience. One concept that is increasingly gaining traction is to bring amusement-park activities to the supermarket space. Upon entrance, much like they were once offered barcode-scanning devices, shoppers will be offered AR glasses that will fill the mundane supermarket environment with colourful characters and animations. These AR glasses will also bring the in-store data collection to a brand-new level, as they’ll offer the constant influx of data on retail analytics through 3D eye tracking.

Instant gratification and exceptional experiences will play a major role in the popularity of supermarkets. At first, they might feel gimmicky, but after a while, will really focus on personalisation and relationship building. Then, supermarkets will realise they need to play a role outside of their proper ecosystem – collaborate with mobility providers, healthcare providers, entertainment providers and brands.

Take the example of a brand like Hello Kitty, originally a shoe brand with a cute kitten design from the 1970s. By 2020, it had already branched out very successfully into the respective markets of sneakers, sweets, furniture, even motor oil and car engines – taking it far beyond its original, pre-teen audience. So it’s not a stretch of the imagination for a high-end retail brand to put on a ‘Hello Kitty Day’ in the future: parents go shopping while their children walk around with AR glasses that show the popular feline following them around. This will not only increase the average amount of items in the basket but would also sell out Hello Kitty merchandise in no time. Perhaps an added benefit of this could be a function that helps parents to track their children, thus largely eliminating those heart-stopping moments every parent has felt first-hand when one’s offspring cannot be found in the store.

We’ve all experienced the frustration of needing a specific grocery item – only to find that the supermarket is closed. In 2051, users will obtain whatever they need whenever they need it. Store hours will stay the same, meaning that European supermarkets will still be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and they’ll still enable shopping outside of those hours with weekend (and night) delivery service. What will be different however, is the arrival of LCD displays on storefronts. The displays will showcase a range of products with QR codes below them. Upon collecting QR codes of all the products wanted, a customer will pay either digitally or through facial recognition. They’ll then select the time at which they want what they bought to be delivered and specify the delivery address.

Storefronts will also have a vending machine function where most sought-after products can be bought instantly. After-hours shoppers will open the app showcasing the real-time contents of the vending machine they want to purchase from. After purchasing the product, they’ll get a QR code generated within the app which can then be placed against the vending machine to release their products. It will take just one more pandemic like Covid-19 for us to realise the value – and the need – for storefront shopping, even during working hours. No longer would shoppers need to spend long periods of time in a closed space where the spread of diseases is a given.

It’s easy to see how this system would also help large families with big grocery needs. The drudgery of dragging shopping to an electric car or bike to transport everything, could become a thing of the past. With a new, hybrid shopping model, users will be able to go to the supermarket, scan the products with the barcode scanner, and have them delivered to their home while enjoying the entertainment the supermarket has to offer. Shopping carts will still be available for whatever products users need immediately, the rest of the visit will be just for the sake of touching or smelling products, benefiting from personalised health advice and product promotions, and seeing a lifesize Hello Kitty juggle some apples and oranges in AR.

The delivery system becomes even more relevant when one considers how our transport habits are set to change over the coming years. According to a trio of cycling associations – Cycling Industries Europe (CIE), CONEBI (the Confederation of the European Bicycle Industry), and the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) – Europeans are expected to buy an extra 10 million bikes per year by 2030, a whopping 47% more than in 2019. The new 30 million per year total will take bike sales to more than twice the number of passenger cars currently registered per year in the EU. With so many more bike owners expected, supermarkets will have to compensate for the lack of grocery storage space these two-wheeled vehicles have, compared to the spacious boot of an average car.

It all comes down to guts… and user data

In 2021 the idea of till-less supermarkets is already beyond its conceptual phase. Actual stores like that already exist. One such example is the Amazon Fresh London Store. Users must identify themselves on arrival by scanning a barcode displayed within their account on the standard Amazon Shopping app. Products are scanned when taken off the shelf and placed in the bag, charged to the individual user’s Amazon Account after they walk out of the store.

For this to work, powerful technology was already developed. But it isn’t limited to creating frictionless user experiences: AI is currently in use for high-impact supply chain management areas, like scheduling, spend analytics, logistics network optimisation and partial forecasting. According to McKinsey, 61% of manufacturing executives report decreased costs, and 53% report increased revenues as a direct result of introducing AI in supply chain.

Optimising the way a supermarket functions is one thing, enhancing a retailer’s relationship with its clients is another thing altogether. According to the Food Marketing Institute's 2018 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report, 55% of users saw their grocery store as an ally in their wellness efforts — on par with health clubs. A logical next step is in-store dieticians that provide various services – from customised meals and diet plans to food demonstrations. US store Hy-Vee is one of the pioneers in the use of in-store dieticians in supermarkets. In 2018, they even rolled out a dietician-led store tour programme. The effort focused on three conditions — diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol.

This relationship between shopper and supermarket can go beyond wellness, and into the entertainment industry. Merging entertainment and mundane activities like shopping for groceries has been imagined by many visionaries and artists already. A perfect example is the Hyper-reality movie by Keiichi Matsuda. This movie showcases a world enhanced by a commercial AR layer. It’s far from just imagination at this point: Display Plessey Semiconductors Ltd has been developing programmes for AR glasses, making that additional layer feel more attainable than ever. That’s not all, 3D eye tracking has already been provided as a service by specialised companies like GazeSense, to conduct user shopping research. It’s possible that we’ll be seeing this feature incorporated into upcoming AR glasses from Apple or Facebook, with versions of them intended for supermarkets.

All of this shows what a supermarket will look like during the day. At night, stores are quite likely to remain closed due to lower footfall. So, what about more acute needs for specific products? Though smart storefronts might seem distant, the presence of vending machines like Acure Pass indicates that these may be a step closer to becoming a reality. These machines already display products on an LCD screen and make it easy to purchase via an app and collect with a personally generated QR code.

When one considers the technological advances already in existence in the retail space, it’s easy to see what lies ahead. Our vision is not reliant on the development of new technologies, just the courage to combine existing ones in new and exciting ways, and in doing so, reimagine the way we think, and shop.

Supermarket retailers have nothing to fear. We will always need food, drinks and clothing. And because of this, there has perhaps been some complacency around shopper experience in this category historically. But this need not continue. AI is here to stay. Innovation is inevitable. It just remains to be seen which retailer giant will dare to pioneer the creation of the ultimate, AI-driven gigamarket of the 2050s, filled with compelling AR entertainment for its users. Let’s go shopping!

// Sources & further reading