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black.ai: Exploring the Australian retail market

The Business Problem

Black.ai is an Australian start-up that has built automated computer vision software, to enable organisations to better understand the behaviour of their customers. This understanding allows organisations to better streamline their operations to the benefit of their customers and their business via loss prevention, optimised customer experience, and operational efficiency. Black.ai had experienced incredible success in the US and now wanted to focus more specifically on the Australian market. In order to do that, they needed to explore the market opportunity, their potential customer reach and gain valuable insights to help refine their go-to-market strategy.

THE BRIEF

Research Objectives

Through the research program, black.ai sought to understand:

  • Current trends, tech adoption, and challenges facing Australian retailers
  • Current approaches to managing customer experience, loss prevention, and operational efficiency
  • Key pain points for retailers and how that varied by retailer type and store size
  • The partnership journey for new suppliers – stakeholders, processes, time
  • Market response to black.ai in terms of:
    • Interest and relevance
    • Expectations of an automated computer vision software platform
    • Triggers and barriers to consideration and adoption
    • Points of parity and difference to other market entrants

 

The Insights Exchange Approach

The Insights Exchange team facilitated and moderated a series of in-depth interviews with senior executives and key decision makers in the retail industry. Functions represented included customer experience, innovation, marketing, operations, and technology. 

Insights Exchange was able to secure interviews with senior executives from industries including fashion, beauty and cosmetics, liquor, furniture, and QSR. 

 

THE SOLUTION

Outputs

Insights Exchange delivered to black.ai a detailed summary report of key insights, with supporting verbatims. This was also followed by a later session to discuss questions and thoughts by the black.ai team once they had time to absorb the learnings. 

Key deliverables included:

  • Foundational understanding of the retail landscape, challenges and trends
  • Retailer focus and priorities (and differences by retailer type or size)
  • Response to black.ai highlighting the key selling points, and areas for optimisation 
  • Recommendations to develop elements of the go-to-market strategy including targeting, product value proposition, key messaging, identification of market problem

 

About black.ai
Founded in 2016, black.ai is a cutting edge research and development start up in the artificial intelligence space. They are currently building advanced systems that utilise computer vision and high performance data organisation and association to enable human behaviours to be searchable through software.

Black.ai has gone through accelerator programs such as MAP and StartMate, and we have worked closely with companies such as CSIRO, Waterfront Toronto, Microsoft, Volkswagen and Audi Research.

“As a start-up looking to expand both in Australia and overseas, we really needed to get a better understanding of the retail market and what opportunities were open to us. We set the benchmark high looking for a caliber of senior retail managers and those with innovation or tech budget sign off working for large footprint stores, so that we could really grasp how we can best tap into the market. The team at Insights Exchange were able to reach out to many of their Australian and international contacts to provide a fantastic mix of insights that we were looking for. We now have a much better view of what trends, challenges and opportunities there are for us.”

Neil Jackson – Customer Success @ Black.ai

ABOUT

Insights Exchange has a network of over 35+ researchers globally including Australia, USA, UK and South East Asia. Our tech-driven approach and partnerships with fast-growth global research technology companies empower us to provide impactful market insights to businesses globally.

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