Footwear Insight

8 • Footwear Insight ~ January/February 2024 footwearinsight.com By Tom Ryan A t a session at the NRF 2024: R e t a i l's B i g S h o w, A my Eschliman, managing director, strategic consumer industries, Retail, Google Cloud, predicted generative AI (genAI) could be as disruptive as the arrival of the internet or mobile phones. "ese massive transformations are nothing new to retail — the internet is a great example, it changed the way we shop; mobile phones, same thing," she said. "Now it's generative AI, which has the capability of transforming everything from the customer experience to the associate experience. It's got tremendous potential, and it's a really exciting time for retail because of this technology. It's about the ability to synthesize and analyze infor- mation that we had did not have before. e possibilities are really endless." AI and genAI were either the primary topic or at least touched on across panels at the NRF show while AI-backed innovations were widely on display on the show floor. e event was held January 14-16 at Javits Center in New York City. Sucharita Kodali, VP principal analyst, Forrester Research said "a lot of what is most powerful about AI already exists" at retail, citing recommendation engines, payment fraud protection, store labor optimization and fulfillment analytics as examples. She said, "ese are the tried & true tools that are built on machine learning and in some cases, deep learning, that have been established and valued over time." However, she said outside some generated text and chatbots, the most promising benefits of genAI involve marketing content. GenAI applications for marketing applications include writing ad headlines, e-mail subject lines and product descriptions; summarizing customer reviews; and creating images. Many panelists remained optimistic that AI will tackle repetitive tasks to free up staff to tackle more creative endeavors, including enabling associates to interact more with customers, rather than replace jobs. Macy's CFO and COO Adrian Mitchell said the retailer has made "lot of progress" applying AI to pricing science, continues to experiment with AI-powered personalization and inventory allocation, and is exploring a Is Artificial Intelligence Ready to Rock Retail? Takeaways from the NRF 2024: Retail's Big Show. NRF EVENT THE FOOTWEAR EYE Photo: Jason Dixson

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