Smart and Sentient Retail High Streets

Abstract

Here, we examine the extension of smart retailing from the indoor confines of stores, outward to high streets. We explore how several technologies at the union of retail intelligence and smart city monitoring could coalesce into retail high streets that are both smart and sentient. We examine the new vantages that smart and sentient retail high streets provide on the customer journey, and how they could transform retailers’ sway over customer experience with new reach to the public spaces around shops. In doing so, we pursue a three-way consideration of these issues, examining the technology that underpins smart retailing, new advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning that beget a level of street-side sentience, and opportunities for retailers to map the knowledge that those technologies provide to individual customer journeys in outdoor settings. Our exploration of these issues takes form as a review of the literature and the introduction of our own research to prototype smart and sentient retail systems for high streets. The topic of enhancing retailers’ acuity on high streets has significant currency, as many high street stores have recently been struggling to sustain custom. However, the production and application of smart and sentient technologies at hyper-local resolution of the streetscape conjures some sobering considerations about shoppers’ and pedestrians’ rights to privacy in public.

Conductive Polymer-Based Interactive Shelving System for Real-Time Inventory Management

“…The SKU identification accuracy achieved using both shape and weight features was 99.2%, and that achieved using only shape features was 95%. As compared to the computer visionbased technology developed by Torrens et al [10], the accuracy and spatial resolution of SKU detection by the developed interactive shelving system is 1.2% higher and four times smaller. Moreover, the developed system is cheaper than computer vision technology by 60%.…”

“…Alternative systems have recently been developed, such as computer vision, which accurately identify the misplacement, misorientation, and theft incidents. Nevertheless, computer vision-based systems are associated with expensive system implementation [10]. Few researchers have also investigated using ultrasound sensors for retail management [11].…”

Ten Traps for Non-Representational Theory in Human Geography

“…Even among children as young as pre-school age, small socio-spatial groups and pairs will draw structure from representation in the environment, even if they need to develop that representation through make-believe play [146,147]. Increasingly, much of the data that we use for geographic research is structured at the point of acquisition, through labelling and location-awareness [148,149], with the result that we may be grappling with representation, even within the 'ingredients' of our scholarship.…”

Machine Learning Based Risk Management of Credit Sales in Small and Mid-Size Business

“…Here, the class outlined the main focus areas proceeding the analysis of the literature which, as a fact, highlighted the great significance of big data that could be used for operational loss and for making more quality decisions across different industries. [19] Torrens (2022) introduced 'Smart and Sentient Retail High Street' idea, explaining how technology could act as a key component of retail revival in city centers. The research focussed on different ways urban retail design and management are being done in attempts to bring out a positive and greener (sustainable) retail environment.…”