Rethinking AI in Retail Operations

AI is no longer theoretical. Retailers are investing billions into technologies marketed as transformational — yet most store teams still face the same operational bottlenecks they did a decade ago. Shelves are empty. Stock records do not match reality. Associates lack direction. Customers are unfulfilled. Simply put, the promise of AI revolution has not yet reached the shop floor.

Why? Because most retail AI is built from the cloud down, not the shelf up.

While the hype has focused on chatbots and image generation, physical retail has faced a different challenge: turning AI into in-store execution. The reality is that black-box models — however technically advanced — collapse when they meet the messy, variable, human environment of store operations.

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