dunnhumby, the global leader in customer data science, today launched its next-generation assortment solution, harnessing cutting-edge AI to revolutionize how retailers select products.

New features unveiled in dunnhumby Assortment include:

• Localized assortments: Retailers can now deliver hyper-localized assortments tailored to the unique preferences of their customer base, enabling a truly localized shopping experience.
• Space-aware assortments and planograms: A new integrated planogram tool optimizes layout and facings, giving shelf-ready layouts based on customer behavior insights. The tool automatically accounts for merchandising rules, physical constraints, and local health and safety restrictions, ensuring retailers can implement planograms with confidence knowing they will work seamlessly on the shelf.
• A streamlined, end-to-end process: The end-to-end solution increases efficiency by enabling collaborative input from multiple teams throughout the assortment process, saving valuable time and resources.

“In today’s dynamic retail landscape, keeping up with customer expectations while outpacing local competition is crucial,” said Jenn Dabbelt, Global Head of Product, dunnhumby. “Our new Assortment tool, powered by advanced AI, allows retailers to build store-specific assortments centered on what the customer wants. This supercharges retailers’ ability to deliver by streamlining the entire process from end to end, helping them bring to life exceptional experiences for customers.”

Advanced AI powering the future of assortment

The new tool uses advanced AI, employing predictive analytics to quantify which products should be selected for which stores, before forecasting the impact of assortment changes across every location.

• Hyper-localization AI: Certain products perform better in some stores than others - protein shakes sell well in stores near gyms, for example. Advances in dunnhumby’s AI means that retailers can now determine which products to select in more intelligent ways. By looking at the relationships between products and stores, advanced recommender systems can detect relationships and highlight opportunities with a much lower risk of error. That leads to better decision-making – and a better experience for customers.
• Planogram AI: By learning from existing planograms and customer behavior, retailers can use AI to choose assortments that optimize sales potential through space on the shelf. Not only does that save retailers’ time, but it also ensures that layouts are as intuitive as possible for customers.
• Predictive AI: Accurate predictions are crucial to building a successful assortments. Predictive models show what will happen to customer demand when products are introduced to – or removed from – an assortment. For example, removing a certain pack size or flavor of cookie will not necessarily reduce category revenue by its full sales value. dunnhumby’s AI lets retailers understand how much of those sales would transfer to a similar remaining product in the assortment, creating a more accurate forecast.

Julie Sharrocks, Head of Retail AI, dunnhumby explained: “Retailers need to be able to understand customer needs – and which products are most likely to satisfy them – quickly and at scale. With decades of refinement behind them, the AI tools, and techniques that we’ve built in dunnhumby Assortment now allow retailers to do exactly that.”

AI-driven ranging at Tesco

Partnering with dunnhumby, Tesco is using Assortment's AI capabilities for assortment curation. This data-driven approach will enable Tesco to provide locally relevant assortments, improving the shopping experience, and ensuring customers are able to find the right products in the right stores.

For more information about dunnhumby Assortment visit www.dunnhumby.com/dunnhumby-assortment.

Upcoming Complementary Webinar on dunnhumby’s Assortment Solution

dunnhumby will be offering a webinar on Assortment AI on July 10, 2024 at 11 AM CDT. Online registration is available at https://bit.ly/4ckvee3