Using Artificial Intelligence for Retail Value Chain

Introduction

The beginning of the third millennium was marked by the unprecedented development of information technology, which accelerated globalization processes and changed almost all aspects of human society. In the modern economic space, information has acquired the status of a production factor on par with land, labour, and capital, which explains the desire of producers to increase the volume of information used and to significantly accelerate its processing (Akkaya & Ovatman, 2022). Retail trade is a sector experiencing rapid growth in the global economy, distinguished by its high social significance and the substantial amount of information associated with it. Significant volumes of information represent a distinctive feature of retail trade and, in the context of intensified competition and general turbulence of the economy, have caused a sharp increase in real sector demand for modern value chain technologies with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing quarantine restrictions adopted by most world governments to prevent the spread of the pandemic were additional incentives to introduce AI-related technologies into retail commerce. The recommended social distancing up to full lockdowns in certain regions led to a sharp increase in buying activity in online stores and, accordingly, an increase in the volume of information in the retail trade. This, in turn, actualized the need to improve the system of information processing and analysis. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant increase in the demand for fully automated stores, which exclude contact of sales staff with both the customer and the product offered (Xu et al., 2020). This predetermined a peak increase in retail demand for modern developments in process automation based on robotics, image recognition systems, consumer identification systems, and, consequently, AI, linking modern high-tech solutions into a coherent value chain. Indeed, AI, at the beginning of the century considered the domain of mostly science fiction, has become a tool to improve the competitiveness of retail amidst the uncertainty caused by the turbulence of the modern economy and the impact of a range of negative and poorly predictable factors (Liu et al., 2018). The attractiveness of this innovative toolkit at the current stage of economic development in the face of fierce competition causes a sharp increase in social demand for science-based approaches to building a retail value chain using AI.