FMCG retail is characterized by fast dynamics and aggressive competition. Retailers and CPG brands striving to keep a unique market position must constantly keep an eye on their brand performance. But just among yogurts, there are around 1500 different products on some markets; it's next...
Science and research have always been at the core of all our endeavors. We collaborate with prestigious universities such as MIT, Chicago Booth and ETH Zürich to devise truly state-of-the-art technologies and funnel them into retail practice. As a result of this fundamental research work,...
In the first issue of Retail Update in 2020, we'll learn about Amazon's plans to open stores in Germany, explain why personalization on mobile is twice as important as on desktop, and sum up the monumental progress that has been made in Deep Learning in...
The common understanding is that AI is a black box that devours data and spits decisions at scale. But is it possible to use it to visualize data from billions of shopping baskets into a simple product map that will allow us to see how...
In this issue, we’ll take a look at how Nike said goodbye to Amazon, why Sephora is the most personalized retail brand 3 years in a row, and how a bias in AI caused discrimination against women. How Sephora Gets Personalization Right Historically, too many brands have...
You know the story — you stop at a supermarket after work just to buy a carton of milk. Next thing you know, you’re leaving the store with a backpack full of groceries and $20 less to your name. And the weirdest thing is that...
Global consumers are cheating on brands and flirting with new ones; a recent study by Nielsen suggests. Only 8% of consumers are loyal to the brands they purchase and as a result, the majority of purchasing decisions are made at or near the point of...
Managing and organizing in general have always been one of my favorite things to do. Already as a teenager I took over responsibility for organizing Christmas markets in middle school, structuring work at the registration offices at sporting events, or planning the prom at high...
In the first Retail Tech Update, we will take a look at how Amazon is trying to rule the grocery aisles, why discounter Aldi has the strongest emotional connection with its customers, and how the famous programming language Python is eating the world. Amazon Wants to...
Reading customers' minds is not easy. But with so many unique lifestyles, dietary trends, constantly changing preferences, and new brands introduced every week, it looks like retailers don't have any other choice. The good news is that with all the available customer data, it should...
Online and offline retailers in the FMCG market must regularly make decisions about assortment planning, product placement, category management, advertising, shelf design, and product categorization. These decisions directly influence the ability of retailers to acquire new customers, develop better relationships with them, and make important...
A well-established loyalty program has many advantages, among them is the ability to gather insights on shoppers in order to build meaningful relationships with them. But how much data do we really have? When shoppers register to a loyalty program, they might be asked questions about...
Retailers, brands and couponing providers share a common challenge: how to best manage a limited promotion budget and prevent overshooting it when offering coupons to consumers? While the cost of distribution can be easily calculated, the cost of discounting (aka redemption) is difficult to predict. During...
Applying the SO1 Supermarket Gym in software integration projects and upcoming research projects This is the last part of our interview series with Sebastian, our Chief AI Officer, on the Supermarket Gym. So far, we have covered: Part 1: Introduction to the Supermarket Gym – what it...
In our previous blog posts, we introduced the Supermarket Gym, a tool to simulate the shopping behaviour of individual customers. So far, Sebastian, our Chief AI Officer at SO1 (Segment of One), has explained the following: Part 1: Introduction to the Supermarket Gym – what it is and...
In the first part of this interview with Sebastian, our Chief AI Officer at SO1(Segment of One), we introduced the Supermarket Gym, a tool to simulate shopping behaviour of individual customers. One first step to utilize this tool is to generate data, which this part (edited for clarity...
How SO1 simulates individual shopper behaviors and choices with the Supermarket Gym We’re often asked what distinguishes SO1 (Segment of One) from other solution providers. One core aspect is our fundamental research work, which is closely tied to academic research. The following interview (edited for clarity...
Explaining latent properties — where meaning has no name Explaining AI is somewhat of a challenge, because for most humans outside of our development lab, the matrices of numbers don’t mean a great deal. So this post attempts a practical comparison. At SO1 (Segment of One) we operate in the...
Massive impact of AI for retail The importance of AI in marketing has grown immensely in recent years: according to Forbes Magazine, 86% of marketing leaders believe that artificial intelligence will revolutionize marketing by 2020. McKinsey recently analyzed the potential impact of AI per industry. The...
The retailer “Kaiser’s" was a traditional German supermarket chain that had more than 550 stores in three regions spread across Germany. The company history of Kaiser’s dates back to the 1880s. In the 1970s it was one of the biggest grocery retailers in Germany, but at...
When scanning through leaflets, do you really scrutinize all the offers or do you just search for the two or three products you usually buy to see if maybe they’re on sale this particular week? Take, for example, Nutella. Your kids love it and, let’s...
Today, I looked at the recent numbers from one of our US retail clients we are serving through one of our partners. The SO1 Engine (developed by Segment of One) optimizes in the weekly emailing for the client to its CRM database by individually selecting...
AI is changing everything - from cars to grocery retail, it will bring improvements at a scale we have never seen before. Most CEOs and Managers understand this and try to leverage that fact in order to get ahead of the curve in their market....
Where the profit grows For a few years now, tech-driven challengers have been shaking up the establishment. Not surprisingly, in retail, this disruptor is Amazon. Recently, Amazon announced its Amazon Marketing Services. AMS sounds friendly and down to earth, but given the history of Amazon's...
Helping retailers grow with the latest technology The grocery retail market is becoming more and more digital- and data-focussed, attracting solution providers to offer innovations and new use cases. In order to not lose the overview, the recently published Grocery Tech Map 2018 can help...
The retailer: The retailer is one of the leading German grocery discounters which has over five billion Euro yearly revenue and more than 2.000 stores. The retailer has no previous loyalty card in place. Challenges: This retailer had previously focused on non-personalized mass marketing and...
The retailer: One of the top 3 full assortment grocers in Germany The retailer is one of the top 3 German grocery retailers which has over 20 billion Euro yearly revenue and more than 2.500 stores, being on average 1.000 - 1.500 sqm in size....
To put it simply, today’s trends are tomorrow's normal. For now, though, real customer centricity and true 1:1 relationships between customers and retailers are still wishful thinking. Very few retailers use all available tools and technologies to put the customer at the center of all...
AI is driving customer experience For a few years now, artificial intelligence has influenced and enhanced many parts of our everyday life. The most prominent examples include what happens when you search for anything via Google, how Facebook filters content on your news feed and...
So1 set out to build an AI platform that offers promotion personalization in real-time. Personalization and real-time are two capabilities that we at So1 believed were crucial to making brick & mortar retail competitive with online. Personalization means the ability to offer consumers what they...