Before supermarkets, smart retail was embodied in the efficient, personal service of the typical neighbourhood grocery stores. Supermarkets squeezed out those stores and introduced the convenience of buying many different products in one location. Today, that location is increasingly digital, the retailer and customer completely separated, and a customer’s value lies not in their friendly wave as they enter a store, but in the data displayed in their online behaviour. Digitalising the shopping experience in this way may open the way for what retailers consider smart retail technology, but as two leading researchers in food retail have discovered, that technology is only as effective as the willingness of humans to use it.
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