According to Hershey, Augmented Reality and Image Recognition go together like peanut butter and caramel
Coinciding with the recent launch of Reese’s Caramel Big Cup, The Hershey Company is utilizing AR and IR technology to help retailers make data-driven decisions that better positions merchandise to increase sales. For additional insights, see the recent blog post by Andy Hunt, Hershey Manager of Applied Digital Innovation.
To summarize, the two technologies were designed and built to drive decisions, track performance, collect actionable data, and boost revenue.
More specifically –
- Augmented Reality helps Hershey’s Retail Territory Sales Lead (TSL) with merchandising decisions, such as determining where the product should be located on the floor. To better visualize the merchandise, TSLs can use AR to generate an image on their tablet that showcases what the product would look like in a specific store location.
- Image Recognition then tracks that particular piece of merchandise and its in-store location to gather insights and inform associates on how placement is having an impact on sales traffic.
According to Hunt “ These technologies provide unprecedented insights we can learn from and share with our retail partners. With this, augmented reality adds visualization to showcase how merchandising needs to look and be placed. And with Image Recognition, this helps with understanding where and why Reese’s Caramel products are selling.”
An example of this is store staff in a Florida retailer, with a Hershey TSL, is using the AR tool to assist in preselling locations and gain buy-in for displays.
In conjunction with this, Hunt sees this capability helping boost product sales as well as decrease human error and free up TSL time to address other store initiatives to improve outcomes.
The company is also looking into leveraging AR and IR to help consumers to increase brand awareness, reach more people find products, etc. – to improve the consumer buying experience and expand opportunities.
Jan 4, 2024 by Liz Domingues / CAIL info@cail.com www.cail.com 905-940-9000