Best Time to Visit the Store

Authors: 
Prachi Chaudhari, Akshay Pandit

Abstract:
This disclosure proposes a Smart inventory system that updates the shopper on WHEN- the best time to visit the store to get the highest success rate on purchasing all or maximum items or available alternatives, WHERE – which aisle to seek the product from, such as in order to accomplish cooking a meal with necessary ingredients in the most optimized flow.

Background:
Post pandemic getting shoppers into physical stores has become more difficult over the past few years. And while industry data shows that foot traffic has substantially recovered, there’s still plenty of room to improve. Attracting shoppers to your store is challenging enough as is it; the last thing you want is for shoppers to leave without buying anything. Shoppers come into retail stores to purchase products they need, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise when the #1 reason they leave is when they can’t find what they’re looking for. A survey from iVend Retail found that 67.3% of respondents say that they walk out of a retail store empty-handed because they couldn’t find the product they needed and 66.3% said it’s because the store didn’t have the items they wanted.

Description:
Persona 1 – Shopper Sam, age 45, single father prefers to shop once a week for his weekly grocery. He has 2 kids and has a busy schedule; he prefers to make a single trip to his local retailer (ABC) and get all his weekly groceries.

Situation – Imagine Sam has a specific recipe in mind, he created his shopping list, visits the store and out of 20 items could not purchase 5 crucial items for his meal prep due to -

1. Lack of product availability (Inventory)
2. Product available but unable to locate in the store
3. Lack of visibility and knowledge of alternatives / substitutes

Consequences – Now Sam either needs to go back home and manage without the items OR will have to make a trip to another retailer to buy those outstanding items on his list. Either action cause frustration, inconvenience, and poor brand affinity.

Persona 2 – On the other hand Retailer Roger from ABC store, whose main goal is to attract new shoppers and retain loyal customers like Sam, is unaware that Sam has planned to visit their store and has no visibility to his shopping list. If Roger knew when Sam is going to visit and what he wishes to purchase, then Roger would be better equipped to take the necessary action.

 Preventive action –

1. He could pay closer attention to his stock management system
2. Maybe he is under ordering critical items and needs to increase the quantities
3. Maybe they are not ordering products as often as they should
4. Shelves are not stocked at the right time
5. Have the right products in stock but people just are not finding them, you may need to make changes with your merchandising. Maybe it’s time to revamp your displays or reposition the products.

Usages:

Introducing a feature called, ‘Best time to visit the store’ on the retailer’s application

What it does for the Shopper?

The shopper creates a shopping list on the retailer’s app; once the list is created, the application’s algorithm calculates the most optimal time slot to visit the store, so that the customer can shop for all / majority items on the list.

Features for Shopper –

1. Against the shopping list provide list of time slots and percentage of items available
2. Provides a Confidence score for different time slots
3. For all available items updates the corresponding aisle number and product code
4. Provides alternatives for the items not available
5. Provides list of offers/promotions associated to the items of the shopping list
6. Once the shopper selects the most preferred time slot, a notification gets triggered to the Retailer alerting about shopper’s preference.

What does it do for the Retailer?

The retailer gets notified every time a shopper creates the shopping list, this notification also triggers a comparison of shopper’s expectation v/s the actual inventory in the store.

Features for Retailers –

1. Basis the notification Retailer has a few options against each item –
2. Unavailable at store: Retailer orders, ETA before shopper’s visit date, same is updated on shopping list for the shopper
3. Unavailable at store: Retailer orders, ETA after shopper’s visit date, same is updated on shopping list for the shopper and proposes available alternatives
4. Available at the store, not on the shelf: Retailer stocks the shelf, aisle number is updated on the shopping list for the shopper
5. Trigger promotions for frequently bought items
6. Share promotions / offers on affinity products (cereals with milk / eggs with bread etc)

Claims:

Calculation of best time to visit the store based on availability of the products, combined with average time for stocking the aisles with the Products, Promotions which would present best time to the shopper to visit the store to buy the items they need.

Enabling Technology:

Ecommerce Website, Mobile Applications, Shopper Assistance Technology, Inventory Management System

TGCS Reference 4408