Right from smart homes to smart cities, connected cars, and connected health; the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought all innovative and life-changing experiences to the world with such amazing applications.
Also, in the last few years, IoT application development has been constantly in demand by myriads of businesses to augment their business functionality and productivity by serving new-fangled experiences to customers.
Since almost each industry sector experiencing the power of IoT, no chance that the retail sector will remain behind to exploit IoT technology. With the combination of e-commerce retail industry solutions and the Internet of Things, the retail industry has many opportunities to flourish more and more, as this will aid in effectively bridging the gap between online and brick-and-mortar businesses.
IoT in retail can have a positive and direct impact on retail businesses, right from their efficiency to improving customer satisfaction and driving more sales.
It’s interesting to know how exactly IoT can contribute to the growth of the retail industry.
Let’s explore some of the best benefits of IoT in retail.
Improved Customer Engagement
With IoT retailers can considerably augment the customer experience; since IoT can effectively help them to collect data, conduct analysis, and make feasible decisions for their online retail stores.
It also enables retailers to better connect with consumers and recognize their preferences, which further helps them to provide all the essential information to the customers required to make a decision. Also, the location services facilitate them to give customized offers or information according to the customer’s location in the store.
Optimize Product Placement
Retailers keep trying to lay out their stores to increase disclosure to customers and perk up sales. Here as well IoT plays a big role. With IoT motion detection sensors, RFID chips, beacons, and video analytics, retailers can collect accurate data from consumer’s movement patterns and recognize premium traffic areas, based on these precise data retailers can set store layouts.
Personalized Messaging
IoT works best for marketing. With RFID, Bluetooth beacons, or Wi-Fi networks retailers can generate location-specific marketing messages whenever a customer leaves or enters a set geographical boundary. This facilitates more personalized and permission-based marketing.
Inventory Tracking
IoT brings great visibility to the inventory and offers better control. The inventory management system powered by sensors and beacons, RFID chips, helps to directly synchronize physical assets with database servers.
Further, the IoT applications such as smart displays, digital price tags, shelf sensors, and high-resolution cameras with image analysis capabilities provide improved control to the retailer over their goods placed in the back storage and shelves.
Optimized In-House Staff
It is quite difficult for retailers to assign helping staff for customers’ shopping convenience. IoT technologies like cameras and facial expression recognition algorithms and motion detection sensors make it possible to spot the customer who has been standing for a longer time in one place having some confusion. Later the IoT ecosystem notifies nearby sales through a smartwatch app or mobile.
Predictive Equipment Maintenance
Many retail stores incorporate different appliances that need frequent repairs and maintenance. By integrating IoT sensors with these devices retailers can monitor small changes in their functioning and thereby can conduct instant maintenance to avoid malfunctioning.
Supply Chain Management
The best use of IoT in retail has been seen within the warehouse, where retailers are employing smart sensors, smart vehicles, robotics, and smart conveyors to move goods and products from one place to another.
This considerably helps them to amplify product shipment pace with high accuracy. Moreover, it also enables retailers with better visibility of the products in the supply chain. The utilization of connected devices in the supply chain also aids in cut-down inventory financing costs and diminishing dependency on human labor.
Conclusion
IoT-enabled solutions like IoT Application Development and connected devices are immensely contributing to the augmentation of the retail industry. Now it will be interesting to watch, what additional experiments IoT will introduce to the world. Many of the big-name retail organizations have already adopted IoT trends and integrated IoT solutions with their business functionality.
To remain ahead in the enormous market competition, it is highly essential to update your business with such technology trends. If you need to integrate effective IoT solutions with your precious retail business, then get in touch with our experts.
Guest author: Varsha Shinde is working as a technical content writer at Excellent Webworld – Mobile App Development Company. Passionate about narrating latest technical and entertainment stories for her audience and believes that imagination is the key source of creativity.
