Retailers can cut through the AI hype at NRF by focusing on four key areas where technology solves real problems

Predictive and generative AI will be the hottest topics at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show following a breakout year in 2024. Evidence of this can be found on the event’s agenda, which serves as a barometer of industry interest and includes nearly 30 sessions with AI in the title.
AI’s dominance at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show will be apparent from the start of an event expected to draw more than 40,000 attendees to New York from January 12-14 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The opening keynote features NRF chairman and president and CEO of Walmart U.S., John Furner, along with vice president and general manager of retail & CPG at NVIDIA, Azita Martin. They will discuss the state of the retail industry and emphasize that “what we’re living through now aren’t just changes, they’re a revolution, and AI, in particular, is changing how business gets done.”
This reality will be evident throughout NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show and affirms a major shift that unfolded throughout 2024 as awareness and enthusiasm about AI’s possibilities grew among retailers. Entering 2025, the focus has shifted to AI adoption and application against high-priority use cases that create meaningful value by solving real business challenges. Here’s a look at the top opportunity areas retailers should be mindful of during conversations at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show:

•  Creating a unified data platform: All the talk of AI at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show hinges on a key driver of success. Retailers must focus on data unification and harmonization as a foundational connected retail strategy for predictive and generative AI to deliver on the core value proposition of faster, more accurate decisions. Disparate and siloed data sources are the enemies of productivity and innovation, especially as data volumes increase, making an even stronger case for a single version of the truth.
• Automated decision-making: The promise of AI-powered productivity improvement is rooted in automating key aspects of certain roles that require tedious data extraction and manipulation, insights discovery, or report creation. AI-powered solutions perform these functions in a fraction of the time it takes a category manager, demand planner, or marketing associate to create a planogram, demand forecast, or personalized promotions.
• Shopper insights discovery: The ability to quickly reveal shopper insights is of tremendous value to retailers, but speed is only one dimension of the benefit. Predictive and generative AI help retailers uncover insights that were previously undetectable. The value of these insights is enhanced by a forward-looking focus on what will happen versus reliance on historical data as a predictor of future shopper behavior.
•  Improved store execution: The perennial challenges of on-shelf availability, planogram compliance, and pricing accuracy are fertile areas of opportunity for every retailer. AI-powered computer vision helps retailers address these business challenges by identifying previously undetectable lapses in execution and prioritizing corrective actions, thus deploying labor against the highest-value tasks.

Retailers will hear a lot about the wonders of AI, but seeing is believing when it comes to appreciating the benefits of technology that event organizers described as revolutionary. SymphonyAI encourages retailers in attendance to view product demonstrations and book time with our AI experts to appreciate how AI-powered solutions change workflows, accelerate insights discovery, achieve automation, and improve execution.
However, meeting at NRF is only the starting point because the show floor at an event with 40,000 attendees can result in sensory overload and leave retailers with more questions than answers. That’s why SymphonyAI created a unique Enterprise AI Bootcamp program that offers an intimate and hands-on experience geared to the specific information needs of individual retailers.