INFORMATION SYSTEM advising the AiFi start-up

Question:-

If you were advising the AiFi start-up, what advice might you give them?

Answer:-

The AiFi start-up came up with a technology of cashier free nano-store similar to that of Amazon Go. The company claims to use artificial intelligence to track the buyers and the items in store. The tracking capability is up to 500 people with real-time statistics (Ives, Cossick, & Adams, 2019). However, individual tracking of buyers may raise privacy concerns. Instead of walking in the shoes of Amazon, the company should first conduct extensive research on customers’ reactions on this technology on a large-scale basis in retail chains. Customer data is of primary importance before launching such a venture. While customers support the no cashier system to avoid queues, many might not agree to this privacy breach. Social media could be a useful tool for the company to run campaigns before the launch. This would directly provide customer insights and the company can think about modifications which do not hamper the privacy. As a start-up it might be overestimating the budget. The proposed plan is more assumption-based than research based. It has already received seed funding but the cost of maintain such technology in the initial phases would be high for a start-up. The appropriate advice would be to keep the human tracking system on hold for now if customers express disagreement. Salespersons can continue to assist the customers and it can work together with a cashier-less retail system. After the initial success customers can be persuaded to accept the tracking system through extensive that explain the benefits and declare the protection of privacy.