Intelligent Technology |

erek Slager, Co-founder

& CTO from Amperity, discusses whey retailers need accurate data to make AI work for them.

Enthusiasm for AI in the retail sector is palpable. Recent research from Amperity reveals that nearly all retailers are planning to increase or at least maintain AI investment over the next 12 months.

The primary motivation behind this surge is the recognition of AI’ s potential to enhance brand loyalty and boost the lifetime value of customers. Retailers also face mounting pressure to stay competitive and meet evolving consumer expectations, especially regarding personalised interactions, tailored experiences and targeted offers based on customer preferences.

Despite widespread interest, however, most AI applications in retail remain small-scale or experimental. The research shows that just 11 % of retailers feel confident in deploying AI at scale across their operations.

Fragmented customer information

Several challenges hinder broader adoption, including a lack of technical expertise, high deployment costs and, most notably, an inability to act on accurate data. Access to clean and comprehensive customer data is essential for AI success. Yet most retailers still hold this information across multiple systems, leaving customer profiles fragmented and incomplete.

Unless businesses can consolidate data from all touchpoints, they will not be able to draw insight from customer engagements or act in a meaningful way.

A solid data foundation

To overcome these obstacles, retailers must focus on creating a solid customer data foundation. This means deploying platforms that allow them to collate various sources of information, in real-time, and present this back as a 360-degree customer profile.

Customer Data Platforms( CDPs) are instrumental in this process, as they enable retailers to collect, organise and make sense of disparate data sources. Retailers with a CDP are twice as likely to feel confident in understanding customer behaviour and three times more likely to deploy AI in customer-facing applications.

One of the key challenges addressed by CDPs is duplicate profiles. Customers often engage through multiple channels using different identifiers – such as alternative email addresses or abbreviated names. Without consolidating these profiles, brands risk misreading their best customers and creating conflicting communications.

Identity resolution allows AI applications to see the bigger picture and enables cross-channel engagement by providing a complete profile.

With an AI-empowered CDP, identity issues can be resolved automatically, however only one in five retailers say they are deploying AI for identity resolution currently. As retailers look to apply AI more broadly, accurate customer data has to become a priority.

Enterprise-wide data management

The retail sector is at an inflection point on its road to full AI adoption – moving from pilots and early-stage

Derek Slager, Co-founder & CTO, Amperity

experimentation to broader deployment and scaled execution.

Building a solid foundation, with enterprise level data management at the heart, will allow retailers to move faster, make smarter decisions and drive growth. AI will then be able to take on more of the work, generate insights and allow brands to connect more meaningfully with their customers. This will, in turn, help them to build stronger bonds of loyalty, incrementally increase the value of each customer and boost retail revenues.

Read the full 2025 State of AI in Retail Report at amperity. com / resources / 2025-state-of-ai-in-retail www. intelligentretail. tech 31