Artificial intelligence is starting to have visible effects in the food trade in Spain. During the last Christmas season, a supermarket chain in Valencia saw a spectacular increase in traffic on its online store after introducing AI-based technologies.
According to the data of the consulting company Deloitte, the online traffic of the stores of the Consum network increased by 693% during the winter holidays. The Spanish press notes that the implementation of artificial intelligence has decisively contributed to this growth.
The company not only expanded, but also increased the salaries of the employees, against the backdrop of accelerated development, El Economista reports.
What the “supermarket of the future” could look like
The subject was discussed at a conference dedicated to the future of food trade, where specialists analyzed how digitization is transforming retail to meet new consumer demands.
Nuria Enríquez, specialist in digital transformation, explained how these “hypermarkets of the future”. One of the main tools used is artificial intelligence, applied in particular to personalize communication with each customer.
The technology is also used to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments, manage large volumes of internal documents and automate repetitive tasks.
“In the supermarket of the future, the key will be to make the customer’s life easier by offering solutions that reduce tasks and save time: from automatically building shopping baskets to personalized services based on the customer’s health, nutrition or lifestyle.” Enríquez explained.
To cope with this transformation, the company relies on data analysis. The large amount of information collected allows retailers to better understand the needs of customers, provide more useful and personalized services and improve the way they communicate with them.
According to the specialist, the great challenge of the industry will not only be the sale of products, but also the ability to offer each customer a personalized and close experience, anticipating their future needs.
The consumer changes rapidly
At the same conference, Elena Izquierdo, partner responsible for the retail sector at Monitor Deloitte, showed that the company’s studies indicate a profound change in consumer behavior.
“We will have a changing consumer, increasingly diverse and multi-dimensional. Society and culture are constantly evolving, and consumers will break their ‘traditional chains’ as the market has shifted from being supply-driven to being demand-driven.”explained Izquierdo.
She warns that technology will evolve rapidly in the coming years. “We will have exponential technology that will eclipse the progress of the last decade. In addition, extreme climate change and its future economic impact will put pressure on the consumer goods industry to transform and innovate”.
For his part, Pablo de la Rica emphasized that retail must respond to a customer “increasingly demanding, informed and responsible”.
This type of consumer emphasizes convenience, value for money and conscious eating. At the same time, they seek to take care of health without giving up the pleasure of eating and without ignoring the impact on the environment.
In this context, brands and distributors are trying to get closer to customers, offering more transparent and honest products and services, with the aim of building relationships based on trust and responsibility, which go beyond the simple commercial transaction.
