The retail landscape has been marked by dramatic swings in consumer preferences, from panic-buying of essential items to sudden surges in home office equipment purchases, and more recently, a pivot towards services like travel. These rapid shifts left many retailers grappling with severe inventory imbalances – overstocked in some areas while facing shortages in others.
Retailers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to refine their inventory management strategies. This shift comes as traditional forecasting methods, heavily reliant on historical sales data, have proven inadequate in predicting the erratic consumer behavior witnessed in recent years.