Designing and developing an IoT-enabled smart store prototype for small enterprises
Type de matériel :
91
In recent years, an increasing number of companies in the retail sector have adopted a digital strategy seeking to provide customers with an omnichannel, seamless shopping experience, whether they’re shopping online, on whichever device, or in a physical store. Thanks to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, offering unique informational and connective resources, companies are eliminating the borders between the online and physical worlds, while developing new decision-making capacities. However, these technologies benefit large enterprises more than small ones, for whom such projects seem out of reach. The objective of this research is to conceive of a prototype for an “affordable” IoT-enabled connected store, and to consider the process for designing and developing such a prototype. We propose a prototype with various functions, from automatic identification and tracking of the items in a store, to real time data processing and actionable insights. RFID technologies, as the “dominant design” to track items in stores, are shown to be mature, efficient, and financially affordable. The complexity of such projects lies in the processing of data, i.e., in their conversion into useful information for decision-making, but this barrier is being gradually removed by the increasing availability of software development platforms and applications. A university-industry collaboration for exploring such IoT projects in small enterprises is one avenue to explore.
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