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<v ->My name is Nate Shenck,</v>

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I'm a Senior Partner in BCG's Washington DC office.

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Before I joined BCG, I was in the Navy,

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and there are more parallels than I expected to find

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in coming to BCG.

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It's a super tight knit community.

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You're working on highly technical problems.

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My background was as an engineer, electrical and nuclear.

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So when I came to BCG,

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I thought that I would do something in that space.

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What surprises me the most about where I ended up,

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is that I ended up in retail.

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It's hyper competitive.

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Retailers don't have large margins,

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you either compete or you perish.

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AI is a new arrow in the quiver for many retailers.

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The vendors can be really important

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in helping drive innovation.

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The biggest opportunity for retailers

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is applying generative AI with humans in the loop

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to speed up the decision-making process.

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What genAI, and AI in general,

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has allowed retailers to do

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is move much faster and much more granular.

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A better localized assortment,

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more personalized promotions for a customer,

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pricing that's relevant in market.

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Another big change with AI

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is the move from customers searching

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to customers asking.

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And what that means for customers is

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it gets much more tailored,

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much more personal recommendations.

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It's not enough to be good

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and to pop high in the rank on a search.

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You have to have the kind of information available

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so that the AI is finding your information

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and not somebody else's.

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Retailers experimenting with that right now

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are gonna better position themselves for growth.

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So it's the next evolutionary course in retail.

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