UK retailers lag in implementing artificial intelligence

Retail use AI at a much slower pace than other industries – research. Source: shutterstock.com

According to Ecommerce?News, retailers in the United Kingdom are using artificial intelligence at a much slower pace than other industries in the country. Over half of UK retailers are still not using machine intelligence, while this share is much lower among financial services companies or manufacturers.

A new research report by Microsoft shows that 56% of retail companies in?the United Kingdom?still not use AI, while for example, 44% of financial service providers and 40% of manufacturers don’t either.

But expectations are that the adoption of AI in retail will remain slow, especially in the big box retail sector. And this is because of their challenges to scale their digital offer quickly and cost-effectively enough so they can compete with online retailers.

AI may be connected more to online retailers than to the high street, however, it’s the bricks-and-mortar retailers who should embrace AI in their battle to compete with online retailers.

Interestingly, another recent study, by Rackspace, shows a more optimistic image. According to?this research, retailers in the United Kingdom clearly recognize the significant opportunity that AI presents: one in four IT decision makers in this industry are planning to use this technology in-store over the next twelve months. This study claims that across both in-store and e-commerce deployments, AI will account for 7.5% of total UK retail sector IT budget over the next year.

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