If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!
As an increasing number of grocery shoppers turn to artificial intelligence to help them do their grocery shopping, they’re increasingly becoming less loyal to their neighborhood grocery store. AI, after all, doesn’t feel loyalty to anyone – it just looks for the best products at the best prices, wherever they happen to be, so you don’t have to.
So one grocery chain is now embracing AI as a way to keep its customers informed and happy – and to keep them from straying.
St. Louis-based Schnucks, with 112 stores across three Midwestern states, has announced it will soon offer shoppers a Schnucks-specific AI shopping assistant. Available by “late summer” on the store’s website and in its app, the AI agent will be at the ready for shoppers who don’t want to scour circulars or nutrition labels to find the best products or promotions.
“This agent won’t just be a search bar,” Schnucks Chief Data and Information Officer Tom Henry said in a statement. “It will be a personalized digital shopping assistant that understands Schnucks aisles, sales, promotions and customers’ lifestyles and can help shoppers plan meals, discover savings, organize parties, and pair food and wine just to name a few uses.”
The AI assistant will be powered by VitalityIP, which focuses on healthy eating and the use of AI to suggest personalized meal plans and nutrition recommendations. VitalityIP will bring “medical-grade health insights and ingredient-level product data” to the partnership, while Schnucks will bring data from its loyalty program to provide insights based on “real customer journeys and actual store inventory.”
The deployment could be seen as Schnucks’ effort to embrace AI and use it to its own advantage, rather than try to push back against it. A recent report from 5WPR found that the suggestions AI shopping assistants offer, do not necessarily correspond with decisions shoppers might make on their own. While Walmart is the most popular grocery shopping destination in the country, Costco was more likely to turn up in AI-powered shopping recommendations.
And while Schnucks is a smaller chain with a more modest footprint, it doesn’t even show up in 5WPR’s top 25 list of AI’s most-recommended grocery stores.
So by embedding an AI shopping assistant within Schnucks’ app and website, and cross-referencing product inquiries and dietary suggestions with insights into its own prices and promotions, Schnucks can keep its customers from getting third-party AI recommendations to shop at Costco instead.
“Our customers are telling us they want trusted guidance” on their visits to Schnucks, Henry said. “Together with VitalityIP, we’re creating a shopping experience that’s not only enjoyable but also more personal, more helpful and more rewarding.”
And if it results in more Schnucks shoppers showing up to shop at Schnucks (say that five times fast) – even better.
Image source: Schnucks
