Retail’s AI Revolution and Why eCommerce Still Feels Stuck In The Past
Recently, we shared this article from The Retail Bulletin, which sheds light on how AI is shaping retail in 2025. Reading between the lines, it’s clear that most of this progress is happening behind the scenes, rather than transforming the shopping experience for customers.
While technologies like Nvidia AI are being used to create digital twins of many stores for internal planning, ultimately, the online shopping journey’s hardly changed.
This means there’s an untapped opportunity here in online retail and retailers are missing out on important opportunities to innovate.
Why? Well, it’s probably a combination of factors:
1. Can they justify the investment? Efficiency is always easier to quantify than innovation.
2. Why take the risk? New innovations could disrupt a system that already does the job “well enough”.
3. Will they need more technical staff? At a time when cost-savings are being sought, this conversation is a difficult one for retailers to have.
4. How much of a need is it? Although trends like gamification and immersive experiences suggest consumers do want a more engaging experience, there isn’t a foolproof path to delivering it.
5. They’re wondering, “why isn’t anyone else doing this?” Innovation is scary — everyone wants to do it, but nobody wants to be first!
We get it. Replicating detailed 3D store and shelf simulations across consumer devices in a scalable, cost-effective way is a challenge even AI can’t meet, so where else is there to go?
This is where Buzz 3D comes in. We’ve developed our solutions to address all these concerns and make innovation in 3D shelf simulations at scale - even from older legacy retail systems - a practical and viable option.
AI is undoubtedly already contributing massively to the way retailers operate and shoppers shop. But by limiting innovation just to the back office and AI-powered onscreen assistants, retailers are stifling their growth potential.
The key is bridging the gap between back office and front end solutions. Get in touch with our team to see how Buzz 3D can help your online retail tap into this new frontier of shelf-based eCommerce.