Optimal Store Construction

Individual branches with optimised assortments and placements

The stationary retail trade offers advantages: high quality advice and the opportunity to experience products directly. In times of online trade, however, these advantages need to be emphasized in order to keep up with trade via the Internet. The stationary retail trade must be much more flexible in responding to its local customer structure. On the one hand, this means that the retailer must know the individual needs of individual customers better and take their wishes into account. On the other hand, a retailer’s branches must be able to take regional differences into account and adjust their product range accordingly. Since various aspects such as store size and structure, customer structure and the competitive environment have an influence on the correct composition and placement of the product range, a well-founded analysis is necessary to create an effective set of analytical tools.

In the future, AI optimisation tools of the K4R platform should help to meet the requirements of listing and placement issues as closely as possible in order to better adapt the product range to the customer’s needs, similar to online shops. Among other things, branch data, customer data, sales data and geomarketing data are used for this purpose. In addition, Fraunhofer IIS can use semdZ to record customer flows in compliance with data protection regulations, as well as data on the exact daily positions of articles via robotics from the REFILLS research project. The continuous update of each shop’s semdZ allows for continuous analyses which can be used to constantly improve the AI suggestion system for the optimization of individual assortments and placements.
Differentiated branches are created which, in combination with customer-oriented services such as shopping apps, are in keeping with the digital age and are aimed at branch-specific customer groups for an optimal shopping experience. Ultimately, the differentiation and optimisation of branches offers benefits maximising advantages for both customers and retailers.

With the help of AI, the optimal assortment composition and placement for the shops is calculated.

Funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag.

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