Shoprite supermarket says it is now using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help consumers save and balance their prices.
Pieter Engelbrecht, the chief executive of Shoprite said on Tuesday that the company has introduced an AI pricing tool.
The AI technology has around 12 petabytes of data on the shopping habits of Shoprite’s consumers.
The new technology has been designed with a global firm called Boston Consulting Group and looks at a number of different mathematical arrangements from product size to even the locations of where a product is sourced.
It its envisaged that this technology and the speed in which it can be done will help Shoprite keep its prices down for the consumer.
“We focus so hard on our consumer and what they need and how we need to innovate to try and get the prices of food and related product down. That is why we sell 1.5 million ”R5” and under-R5 items a week, because that is what we do. We understand there are more than 10 million people that live off R350 a month, and we find them solutions,” Engelbrecht said.
Shoprite finance results
On Tuesday Shoprite released its results for the six-month period under review.
The review looked at sales both in-store and online via Shoprite’s digital Checkers Sixty60 app.
Engelbrecht said that it had 14% increase in sales over this period.
“The 14.6% increase in sales from our core business segment equates to R12.4 billion in additional customer spend with us on the same period last year,” he said.
“Despite reporting against an exceptionally high base of sales growth of 17.5% for the same period last year, the 14.6% increase in sales for this interim period compares admirably to the rest-of-market growth in South Africa, per NielsenIQ, for the same period of 7.6%”.
He said that Checkers and Checkers Hyper had a 13.7% sales increase. Shoprite and Usave increased sales by 13.1%. Shoprite, with the inclusion of 51 stores acquired from Massmart, increased sales by 13.2% whilst Usave, Shoprite’s limited assortment discounter, increased sales by 12.3%.
2,000 new jobs
Engelbrecht said that the company has added a net of 197 new stores over the last six months and have a total of 3 543 stores.
Shoprite has also added 2 617 new jobs to the job market and in total have around 161 000 employees.
IOL Business