AI Readiness Profiles for Retailers

The AI Readiness Profiles for Retailers include the following for each company:

• Total AI Impact from 2022-2029
• Annual Impact via Sales Improvements, Gross Margin Improvements, and SG&A Savings per year through the end of the decade
• Total AI Readiness Score (scale of 0-100) (see methodology)
• AIR Ranking in total
• AIR Ranking for their segment (direct competitors) 
• Total AI Impact by Line of Business (Merchandising/Supply Chain, Sales & Marketing, Commerce, Infrastructure, BI/Analytics, Store Systems and Other (Collaboration, ERP, Legal, etc.)
• Total by specific solutions driving the greatest AI benefit for the company.

You can see a sample profile in the Preview Tab that shows the actual data for a company.

The Retail AI Readiness Profiles can be purchased individually for $199 each or access the entire list for $2,500 annually for enterprise access. The benefit of the annual access is that when systems are upgraded, this changes the index, rankings, and the potential benefit that the retailer can see through maximizing their use of AI.

Currently data is available for public retailers and restaurant chains based in North America.  We will be expanding this to similar segments in Europe soon.  Contact us at ihl(at)ihlservices.com for more information.

The list of segments included are the following:

• Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
• Apparel (Fashion, Luggage)
• Hard Goods (DIY, Electronics, Books, Furniture, Pets, Sporting Goods, etc.)
• Health and Beauty (Drug Stores, Cosmetics)
• Restaurants (Fast Food, Bar/Table Service)
• Pure Play Ecommerce (All segments for online only or mostly online retailers)

Companies included for profiles

These can be purchased individually or the complete set for $2,500.

AMCON Distributing Company, ARAMARK, Aaron’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Albertsons Companies, Allbirds, Amazon.com, American Eagle Outfitters, Ark Restaurants Corporation, Asbury Automotive Group, AutoZone, B & G Food Enterprises, BAB, Inc. [Big Apple Bagels], BJ’s Restaurants, BJ’s Wholesale Club, BMC Select, Barnes & Noble Education, Bath & Body Works, Beacon Roofing Supply, Best Buy, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Big Lots, Biglari Holdings, Blue Apron, Boot Barn, Boston Pizza International, Brilliant Earth, Brinker International, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Burlington Coat Factory, CDW Corp., CVS Health, Caleres, Camping World Holdings, Canada Goose, Canadian Tire Corp., Carrols Restaurant Group, Carter’s, Cheesecake Factory, Chewy.com, Chico’s FAS, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Chuy’s, Inc., Citi Trends, Columbia Sportswear Company, Conn’s Inc., Costco Wholesale Corporation, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Crocs, Inc., Darden Restaurants, Dave & Buster’s, Denny’s Corporation, Designer Brands, Destination XL Group, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Dillard’s, Dine Brands Global, Dollar General Corporation, Dollar Tree, Dollarama, Domino’s Pizza, Duluth Trading Company, Dutch Bros Coffee, Ebay, El Pollo Loco, Estee Lauder, Ethan Allen Interiors, Etsy, Express, Family Fare Supermarkets, Fastenal, Fat Brands, Ferguson Enterprises, Fiesta Restaurant Group, Finning, FirstCash, Five Below, Flanigan’s Enterprises, Floor And Decor Outlets Of America, Foot Locker, Fossil, Franklin Planner Corp, Gaiam Inc., GameStop-US, Gap, Inc., Genesco, Genuine Parts Company/NAPA, GoPro Inc, Good Times Restaurants, Grocery Outlet, Group 1 Automotive, Groupon Inc., Guess, Inc., Harley-Davidson, Havertys Furniture Companies, Hibbett Sports, Hugo Boss, Indigo Books & Music, Ingles Markets, Jack in the Box, Jo-Ann Stores, Kirkland’s, Kohl’s, Kura Sushi USA, LL Flooring, La-Z-Boy, Lands’ End, Leon’s Furniture, Limited, Lindt & Sprungli USA, Liquor Stores NA, Loblaw Companies Ltd., Lowe’s Home Improvement Cos., Lululemon Athletica, Lumen [CenturyLink], MTY Food Group, Macy’s, MarineMax, McDonald’s Corporation, Meritage Hospitality Group, Metro, Inc.-Canada, Miniso, Monro Muffler Brake, Movado Group, Muscle Maker Grill, Nathan’s Famous, National Pen, Natural Grocers, Nike, Noodles & Company, Nordstrom, O’Reilly Automotive, Odd Burger, Office Depot, Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, Option Care Health, Overstock.com, PANDORA A/S, PC Connection, Papa John’s International, Pfaltzgraff, Pier 1 Imports, Pittsburgh Paints-PPG, PriceSmart, Qurate Retail Group, Rakuten.com, Ralph Lauren, Rave Restaurant Group, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Reitmans(Canada), Rent The Runway, Restaurant Brands International, Restoration Hardware, Richelieu Hardware Ltd., Rite Aid Corporation, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Inc., Roots Canada, LTD, Ross Stores, Inc., Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc., Scholastic Inc., Shake Shack, Sherwin-Williams, Shoe Carnival, Inc., ShopHQ, Skechers U.S.A., Inc., Sleep Number Corporation, Sonos, SpartanNash Company, Sportsman’s Warehouse, Sprouts Farmers Market, LLC, Starbucks Coffee Co., Steve Madden, Stitch Fix, Sweetgreen, Systemax, T.J. Maxx, Tanger Outlets, Tapestry, Inc., Target Corporation, Texas Roadhouse, The Buckle, The Cato Corporation, The Children’s Place, The Home Depot, The J. Jill Group, The Kroger Co., The North West Company, The One Group, The Walking Company Holdings, ThredUP, Tilly’s, Torrid, Tractor Supply Co., Ulta Beauty, Urban Outfitters, Vera Bradley, Victoria’s Secret Stores, Village Super Market[Shoprite], Vince, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Walmart Stores, Warby Parker, Wayfair.com, Weis Markets, Wendy’s International, Williams-Sonoma, Wolverine World Wide, YETI Coolers, Yum! Brands, Zumiez, e.l.f. Beauty, easyhome ltd

You can download a complete AIR profile on Macy’s here.

But below are individual screen shots as well.

We welcome you to contact us for a demo of the product so you can see the level of current data and detail you would be provided.

Click thumbnail to expand view. 

Click here to request more information about this product

You can purchase single reports for $199 each (one time) or all the reports for a cost of $2,500 which provides ongoing updates and access for a year.

Licenses Available

Whether you purchase the individual reports or all of them, they come with an Enterprise License as defined below.

Enterprise License – a license that allows for the research to be accessed and shared internally with anyone else within the organization and wholly owned subsidiaries.

IHL Group License and Fair Use Agreement

All of IHL Group’s generally available research are electronic licenses and can be shared freely within the purchasing organization and wholly owned subsidiaries. We only ask that this information not be shared with partners or others outside the purchasing company without authorization from IHL Group. The license does not extend to joint ventures or other partnerships. If the relationship is not a wholly-owned subsidiary, then both parties would need a license.

Practically, this implies the following:

1. The purchasing company can use the data and research worldwide internally as long as the international organizations are wholly owned subsidiaries of the purchasing company.
2. The data or any research cannot be distributed in whole or in part to partners or customers without express written approval from IHL Group.
3. The purchasing company may quote components of the data (limited use) in presentations to customers such as specific charts. This is limited to percentage components, not individual unit information. Unit data cannot be shared externally without express written approval from IHL Group. All references to the data in presentations should include credit to IHL Group for the data.
4. The purchasing company can reference qualitative quotes in printed material with written approval from IHL Group.
5. All requests requiring written approval should be submitted to ihl(at)ihlservices.com and will be reviewed within one business day.

For any questions regarding this policy, please contact us at 1-888-IHL-6777 (North America) +1.615.591.2955 (International) or email us at ihl(at)ihlservices.com.

The AI Readiness Index was created from numerous public and private resources from IHL’s research.

1. Overall AI Forecast

We started by creating a forecast for AI Impact for worldwide retail, forecasting that impact from 2022-2029 worldwide, segment, and tier. We used the standard financial statement for our basis.  We started with a standard forecast for retail sales for the next 7 years and then we added potential AI impact. For instance, forecast AI impact in 3 buckets: Sales Growth, Cost of Goods improvement and Sales/General Administrative (SG&A) improvements that AI could provide. From that, we then looked at those impacts by year in 3 categories of AI. The traditional AI/ML, Generative AI, and Artificial General Intelligence later in the decade. More detail can be found here on our overall forecast.

2. AI Impact by Line of Business Function and Solution Area

We then used our Worldview IT 10 Line of Business categories (Business Intelligence, Commerce, Sales & Marketing, Distribution and Supply Chain, etc) to segment the total impact for each area by each of the AI types. Further, we used solution types as a way of even further defining business impact…what do retailers do with these solutions – what impact do these make in an organization?  Some are more impacted than others and our total forecast is impacted by that.

3. IHL Sophia for companies

In our Sophia intelligent lead service, we track the hardware, software, services and key personnel. What we show publicly is the publicly available data for each company. But we have a great deal more NDA data for installs by retailers and vendors due to our analyst reports. Although we have many thousands of retailers in the database, we limited this first index to public retailers based in North America. The reason for this is accurate financials for sales, sales growth and profit is critical to the index we created. Those most ready to take advantage are not just those that have their systems in order but are in the financial shape to make the investments required to truly scale this technology.

4. The AI Readiness Index

Once steps 1 and 2 were created we had the parameters to work from that would allow us to evaluate individual retailers against each other. We then created a 9-part algorithm for evaluation and ranking. This algorithm included total revenue (scale matters in AI), data maturity, analytics maturity, alignment with AI leaders and key vendors, retail segment (segment has big impact on AI due to availability of clean data and scale), cloud score (how much do they leverage cloud for data lakes – whether public or private), sales growth $, and profit growth $ (free cash flow and profitability matters).

5. Final Rankings

The end result is each retailer receives a score from 0-100 and we have the financial impact forecast for each retailer. That is what included in this study. We are also planning to add the entire detailed forecast by line of business category for each retailer in our Sophia system going forward. So, if you are interested in our view of what AI will bring for impact to Walmart’s merchandising and supply chain systems, we will have a forecast for that.

6. AI Readiness Profiles

The last step is creating the profiles for the individual retailers once we have the rankings completed. The data from item 2 is then exposed on an individual company basis showing rankings against peers in their segments and overall. Further, we share our projections on how much company benefit can come through AI use through the end of the decade.