As AI reshapes decision-making across retail, FMI's GroceryLab is built to help teams turn that shift into operational reality.
By: Doug Baker, Vice President, Industry Relations, FMI
Shelly Palmer advises Fortune 500 leadership teams on AI strategy. His message to retail executives has been consistent, and it is arriving with urgency.
A few of his observations on where retail stands right now:
- AI is not a feature. It is infrastructure. It will sit inside every system and every decision layer.
- Data is the only durable competitive advantage. AI outcomes depend on whether your data is unified, clean and usable.
- Execution is the gap. Most organizations are not structured to operationalize what is already possible.
- Retail is the proving ground. Personalization, pricing, inventory and experience are all being rewritten in real time.
This is not a future state. It is an operating reality.
One of Shelly's sharper observations is that the funnel is gone. I agree.
For years, retail strategy ran on a familiar model. Awareness led to consideration, then purchase, then loyalty. Marketing and merchandising teams built programs to move shoppers through each step. That framework took hold in the 1990s, when digital commerce was barely a factor and the path to purchase was predictable and linear.
That model no longer applies.
Today, decisions are compressed. A shopper can search, evaluate and purchase in seconds. In many cases, they are not evaluating a full set of options at all. Algorithms are doing that work first. Search results, recommendation engines and AI assistants filter products before shoppers see them. What shows up is already ranked, priced and positioned.
In a grocery store, this happens across every channel at once. A shopper might discover a product through a targeted ad, research it on a brand's website, find a substitution in a retailer's app and complete the transaction via curbside pickup. Retail media, personalization engines and real-time inventory signals are shaping the basket before a shopper opens a cart or walks through a door. The journey and the transaction are no longer separate events.
That is why we invited Shelly to headline GroceryLab, the food industry's first cross-functional forum focused on how we serve the shopper when technology sets the pace.
In June, in Detroit, Shelly will frame what is changing. The real work is what comes next.
At GroceryLab, we will ask what it takes to unify data across teams so it can drive business decisions. We will look at how organizations adjust when speed and automation matter more than process and hierarchy. We will examine where AI shows up in ways that are visible to the customer and measurable to the business.
We have designed working sessions for retailer operators and trading partners. Merchandisers, marketers, operators and technologists will be in the room together, because the friction in omnichannel retail does not sit in any single function.
Shelly will set the context and the opportunity. GroceryLab is where teams work through it toward execution. We hope you will join us.
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