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The App supports customers to receive a tailored shopping service based on their health, budget, independence, cognitive ability, mobility, and any forthcoming calendar events.
About
The population of the world is ageing. The Office for National Statistics predicts there will be over 20 million people aged 65 years and over by 2068 in the UK (ONS, 2019). Recent studies highlight that older adults demonstrate increased interest in using computers and the Internet, which changes the traditional perception of technology barriers among older users. CoVID-19 has accelerated the use and adoption of new technologies among a wide user group. The Guardian reported that, in April 2020, the proportion of online grocery shopping exceeded 10% for the first time, as older customers moved online and almost doubled their spending on food deliveries during the lockdown (Wood, 2020). Meanwhile, several reports indicated customers would continue using online shopping after the lockdown (Adapa et al, 2020). There is also a trend towards omnichannel retail (von Briel, 2018), offering a seamless shopping experience across numerous channels, including in-store and online shopping using computers, tablets, smartphones, with options such as delivery, click & collect in-store, at a drive-in point, pickup at a parcel shop, locker or elsewhere. Thus, we aim to develop a Personalized Smart Shopping virtual assistant App (Smart Shopping App) which supports customers to have a better grocery shopping experience cross omnichannel retail platforms. The Smart Shopping App will be inclusively designed based on ageing customers’ (the extreme end-user) shopping needs and aims to satisfy all customer segmentations, such as younger customers and family customers. The Smart Shopping App provides holistic support alongside the customers’ shopping journey to help them make the right decision in grocery shopping. For example, AI technologies will be applied to consider customers’ frequently purchased shopping items, diet style, medication and budget in an intelligent shopping decision-making process, so as to provide appropriate shopping suggestions for the customers. During the customer’s interaction with the Smart Shopping App, through machine learning and AI, the App will collect customers’ shopping behaviour data automatically and develop a unique profile for the customer. Then, based on the customer’s shopping needs, the App will be able to provide more customized and accurate shopping suggestions to the customers. In addition, the Smart Shopping App will support customers’ in-store shopping via Augmented Reality technologies which integrates the virtual shopping assistant in a physical store environment to provide in-store navigation, product price comparison, checking of product information based on customer’s medication and diet, receive product promotions and facilitate self-checkout. This will help to reduce customers shopping time, improve store service efficiency and customer satisfaction. To help people to simplify their life and be more productive. Millions of customers already track their health and well-being data, and actively seek ways to use this data to support them in living longer and healthier. The Smart Shopping App will contribute to meet the current global health challenge by supporting customers to achieve healthier shopping habits. Real time data flow will help customers to select the products they need. Through a mobile camera, the App can link the physical store with the virtual shopping assistant. It can collect and analyse product data during customers’ in-store shopping and recommend shopping suggestions based on their personal needs. Furthermore, The Smart Shopping App will also provide valuable data to retailers including customers’ online and in-store shopping habits and behaviour, which will support retailers to better plan their business based on predicted future shopping behaviour, explore new or merging future retail trends, and develop new retail services for customers.
Key Benefits
The Smart Shopping App will contribute a positive solution to the challenge of leading healthier lives, and supports customers to have a healthy lifestyle from a shopping perspective. Also, it will help ageing customers to have an independent and high-quality later life. Benefits to customers, such as • Appropriate shopping suggestions based on customers’ shopping habits, medication, cooking skills and other shopping related factors • Encourage customers to have a healthy lifestyle • Shopping based on budget • Social communication with other customers (family and friends) • In-store navigation and price comparison • Better shopping plan to avoid food waste • Improved cooking skill training through recipes suggestion plus meal-based shopping Benefits to retailers, such as • Better understanding of customers’ current and future shopping needs and habits, • Data to support improvements to business plan • Understand customer’s in-store journey, • Improve store efficiency and reduce demands for shop floor labour force • Speed up customers’ shopping process to reduce customers’ shopping time • Based on customer’s omnichannel shopping behaviour data, retailers can improve their store planning, customer journey, issues that customers face, customer patterns, trends and demands. • Platform for retailers to share their special recipes and promote sales • The potential to Increase sale per square meter
Applications
The Smart Shopping App can be applied and integrated with a retailer’s current online shopping system. It also can be used to encourage a healthier lifestyle, skills development for cooking training, and community-based service for ageing customers.