Consumer packaged goods or CPG are products that consumers use up and replace regularly. They include food, beverages, cleaning products, cosmetics, and so on. Most of the time, they are sold by retailers and their packaging serves to identify them from other goods. You can find them in a grocery store, in a supermarket, in a big box store shelf or even in a pharmacy. Competition forces CPG companies and firms to use efficient technology to increase their sales figure. Image Recognition is then one of the best solutions to develop a retail business.

Why Use Image Recognition in a Retail CPG Store?

IR is a computer technology that allows the recognition of peoples, animals and objects through the use of specific algorithms and machine learning concepts. For CPG companies and firms, it can help them catch physical information from their shelves and turn them into reliable and actionable data.Thus, the goal is to find the perfect solution to monitor the retail execution.

Using IR in retail is still more theoretical than we would like it to be because the technology depends on the progression of artificial intelligence. But experts are already doing their best to devise it. Nonetheless, CPG retailers can already take advantage of it with its current capacities in recognition of images. Moreover, it is expected that in 2020, 85% of client interactions in retail will be controlled by artificial intelligence. This means that all CPG brands should already get ready to use an IR solution in retail in the near future.

One of the biggest advantages of image recognition in retail for CPG companies is that it can considerably improve the way they sell the products online and manage inventory in stores. Besides, IR can impact the way clients interact with the CPG products put in sale and enhance the companies’ ability to connect with their consumers anytime they are in the shopping area.

Best uses for Image Recognition in Retail for CPG Companies

If you plan to perform image recognition for you CPG retail business, you will need data cataloging and ensure that images can be accurately classified in the simplest way possible. It may be challenging but there some CPG firm that managed to use this computer technology to find specific products. The goal is then to allow the clients find the products they want to buy more easily.

On the other hand, the use of image recognition can help retailers measure the clients’ level of satisfaction. As an example, the American multinational retail corporation, Walmart, has already filed a patent for the creation of software which is able to gauge the emotion state of a customer through an IR solution. It is said that the technology may use checkout cameras to scan clients’ faces in care they are frustrated because of any lack of satisfaction. Another example: some Chinese CPG firms (DJ.com and China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd) are developing an image recognition that is supposed to open unmanned stores with no sales staff.