Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Customer Loyalty in the Indian Retail Industry

Introduction

In the current market scenario, only retailers leveraging innovation and differentiation can survive, and such innovation can come only from the use of creativity and the best available technologies. Technology is the solution to the problem in this digital era. Industry 4.0 brings four major innovations- Internet of things (IoT), robotic and automation, 3D printing, and augmented reality. All these innovations come with further series of technologies like Beacons, body scanner, PoS, EDI tech, etc. These technologies are impacting retail outlook (Berman and Evans, 2010; Rowley and Slack, 2003). All these innovative technologies in the retail sector not only increased the effectiveness of the retail business in terms of better inventory management, better prediction of consumer buying behavior but also improved customer experience due to customization and automation. Technology reduced long checkout lines with benefits of high speed in providing services in the store, loyalty card programs, etc. Artificial Intelligence being adopted these days is the combination of several technologies, which allow software and machines to sense, understand, act and learn on their own or augment human activities and forms the bases of Industry 4.0.