Retail innovation will be brought sharply into focus this week at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2025 event in Singapore.
Themed ‘Retail Unlimited’, NRF Apac is set to explore the limitless possibilities in retail, including enhanced customer experiences and digital transformation strategies. As the region prepares to explore the latest trends, insights from the global stage remain highly relevant; January’s NRF conference in New York, for example, saw intense discussion around automation, generative AI, and next-gen payments.
For Clinton Sham, head of customer success – enterprise and commercial, at Fujitsu Oceania, it wasn’t the tech itself that stood out in NRF New York last January, it was how seamlessly it delivers a better customer experience. The best retail customer interactions are enabled by technology you don’t even notice, shared Sham, a first-time visitor to NRF New York.
“It’s important that we implement technology that doesn’t get in the way of the consumer, but complements their experience. You can have a great product, but if you don’t [deliver] the experience, you can crumble.
“And most of the time, it is hidden technology that delivers that experience.”
That subtlety is something Sham and his colleagues at Fujitsu are focusing on with AI – going beyond chatbots and analytics dashboards. They envision a future where AI is woven into every corner of the shopping experience – predicting behaviour, preventing theft, adjusting pricing on the fly, and anticipating consumer needs before they even arise.
“We want to make sure that customers are having amazing experiences in the store, because that’s when they will come back to the store. That’s what retailers are after.”
From loyalty cards to real-time engagement
At the heart of that transformation is personalisation, but not the old-school approach of flooding customers’ inboxes with generic discount codes. Hyper-personalisation is about engaging shoppers with relevant offers at precisely the right moment, while they’re standing in an aisle, reaching for a product.
For example, Fujitsu’s team is looking to ensure retailers can understand or even predict a customer’s behaviour when they enter a store, so they can target the customers effectively. If someone is standing in an aisle in front of a product and they scan something, they should be sent promotions right then and there.
This approach goes beyond saying, ‘Hey, just give him 25 per cent off, and then he will buy more coffee’. It should use AI to approach the customer interaction as an opportunity along the lines of, ‘I know I can make a little bit more because the person enjoys coffee’ so, how do I target them effectively so that I don’t reduce my margin, but at the same time, they still buy?
Through GK Engage, a loyalty platform from GK Software (recently acquired by Fujitsu) powered by machine learning, shoppers receive promotions tailored not just to their purchase history but to their real-time behaviour in-store. A customer can scan a product and receive an offer that makes sense to them instantly. This creates a helpful, rather than intrusive, customer experience
The result is what Sham describes as a new standard in customer experience: one that works across all channels, but is most critical in physical spaces where expectations are highest.
The self-checkout impact
Another solution blends computer vision with AI to power seamless self-checkouts. Unlike traditional barcode scans, this system uses cameras to identify items without manual input. It’s quick, accurate, and – perhaps most importantly for customers – less annoying.
“No one wants to be stuck at self-checkout scanning the same orange three times because the system can’t read it,” said Sham. “These are the moments that shape the overall experience. If you get them wrong, you lose a customer.”
AI-powered systems are increasingly being used to reduce theft and errors, prompting consumers with a polite reminder when something is amiss – say, an item left in the cart or a mismatch between the scanned item and what’s detected by the system. In this way, AI becomes not a surveillance tool, but a quiet partner in the shopping process.
Fraud prevention doesn’t have to feel punitive. It can feel like good service.
Tech that understands you
Another emerging application evident at NRF was age-detection technology. Rather than relying on staff to ID every alcohol or restricted item purchase, systems can now estimate a shopper’s age and prompt verification only when necessary. It’s one more way to smooth the journey without sacrificing safety or compliance.
Sham quickly points out that these innovations are part of a broader strategy, not isolated gadgets, but part of a holistic stack that supports a seamless customer journey.
“We often start from a technology perspective and look up,” he said. “But what NRF reminded me is that we need to start with the experience and look back through the stack. What’s the experience we want to build?
