Unikie’s recent AI in Retail event brought together a diverse group of retail industry decision-makers, including retail channel developers, supply chain and development managers, and CEOs. The participants represented businesses operating in Finland and internationally, in a variety of retail industries from grocery to restaurants, for instance.
Common interests for the participants included expanding and optimising their store networks, assortment, space and pricing in the retail channel.
The event, hosted by Unikie’s top retail data analytics expert Antti Syväniemi, focused on the opportunities of AI in the retail industry.
Today, retail has to deal with huge product variety, highly fragmented consumer preferences and demand that varies regionally and based on time of day, weekday, week and season. This increased complexity requires more accurate insights and foresight to support decision-making. Smart decisions should be based on data, leveraging advanced analytics and AI to power the process.
Keynote: AI as a Business Driver for Retail
The event keynote was delivered by Ari Heino from NielsenIQ, one of the leading global big data companies. Ari’s session focused on how advanced analytics combined with AI will bring the next significant leap in productivity.
According to NIQ, the biggest challenge involves going through a high volume of product ideas to identify the ones that have the potential to grow the company brand while taking evolving consumer trends into consideration.
Instead of the traditional consumer questionnaires and interviews, today AI can be used to create synthetic respondents that evaluate and give feedback for innovation ideas. AI personas are based on human demographic characteristics and purchase behaviour, essentially impersonating a particular particular consumer. This solution speeds up the study process from weeks to just minutes.
AI-based tools are also becoming increasingly accessible and more natural to use. Ari Heino gave a demo of NIQ’s Ask Arthur solution, where interacting with big data is as intuitive as having a conversation.
Finally, Ari Heino and Unikie’s Antti Syväniemi presented a customer case, where NIQ’s Spaceman tool and data sources were combined with Unikie’s AI-powered decision platform to automate and integrate assortment and space planning across stores.
In this case, the objective was to move beyond a one-size-fits-all model toward demand-driven localization of both floor space and product assortments.
Using NIQ data and existing Spaceman infrastructure, the Unikie Retail Decision Agent System was used to combine predictive models, mathematical optimization, and GenAI-based orchestration to enable a two-digit improvement in gross margin within selected product categories. This was achieved by aligning store-specific space configurations with localized assortments.
Key outcomes included:
- A scalable AI-driven process that automates macro- and micro-space planning
- Significant time savings for internal teams
- Repeatable localization of assortments across the store network
- A flexible “kill switch” way of working that allows rapid response to market changes
All in all, this case illustrated how AI can turn complexity into competitive advantage when applied with a focus on measurable, operational outcomes.
Niko Haatainen from Unikie on the left and Ari Heino from NielsenIQ on the right
Tech Deep Dive: Turning Data Into Human Insights
Unike’s CTO Niko Haatainen talked about how heterogeneous data can be turned into homogenous insights utilizing AI-driven Large Language Models (LLMs).
Quite often, the problem with data is that it lives in a wide range of sources and building tools and processes to reach that data is difficult and time-consuming. Here’s where LLM-based AI agents can come in, automating data access and allowing humans to focus on what they do best.
With AI agents to access the data, humans can focus on actual results instead of the process. The human expert guides the AI, adds value by making expert insights and makes the decisions.
Panel: Real-Life Use Cases for AI in Retail
The event concluded with a panel discussion where Ulla-Maija Torkkeli from Puuilo and Maija Heimala from Tokmanni shared their experiences on store network, space and assortment optimization and real-life use cases of AI.
In recent years, both of the publicly traded companies have grown significantly. A critical factor for that growth has been understanding where to expand next and to anticipate how their assortment meets local demand, while taking competition into account.
From the left: Ulla-Maija Torkkeli, Maija Heimala and Antti Syväniemi
AI has been an important element in obtaining insights that drive decision-making. For example, Tokmanni was able to identify the most prominent new store locations with an extremely high validated sales potential accuracy.
Ulla-Maija Torkkeli and Maija Heimala talked about a cultural change in which AI becomes a trusted enabler for managing businesses in a forward-looking manner. According to Heimala, AI’s big impact is on making the most important, strategic decisions on how companies should develop their operations.
The topic sparked a lot of discussion, especially on how to get started with the AI journey. According to the panelists, it takes the courage of putting plans into actual motion, leading by example and being active in AI at all levels.
Unikie provides solutions for the retail industry for price, space and store network optimization. If you want to improve your business performance with demand–driven optimization, take a look at our solutions for retail.
