The concept of digital twins is relatively new in consumer retail, with its untapped potential waiting to be discovered by brands and retailers. 

Digital twins can play a vital role in improving the customer experience by optimizing security implementation, in-store planning, and energy management. Digital twins can play a significant role in enhancing customer service by designing a virtual model of customers. Growing and retaining a substantial customer base is essential to achieving success in retail. Digital twins can provide this by creating a unique customer experience, such as providing ideal fashion apparel products to customers based on their digital twin model.

With digital twins, consumer activities can be monitored through their online personas or avatars in online stores and social media. While they represent limited information about an individual, it is likely personal avatars will become an important element to retail in the future through the further development of sophisticated digital assistants. Digitization of products although hardly revolutionary can have a big impact on marketing segmentation and the supply chain. The diminishment of in-store sales coinciding with the rise of online shopping and subscription services will cause major disruption to distribution. As a response to these retail companies will customize distribution to fit the consumer’s pattern of interest. Characteristics of the supply chain would change from long term focussed production plans to short term production plans which are based on measurements of recent consumer demand. This would result in the expansion of marketing segmentation with a more precise focus on individuals.

How retail product manufacturing will be changed by digital twin simulations

Digital twins can provide a copy of an actual product on the internet which can be monitored, edited, and updated as the real physical product goes through different stages of its life cycle. As products go from being manufactured to being consumed, digital twins will continue to develop as a product’s identity evolves and eventually moves to its disposal. We will cover the details of this process more thoroughly in our event about digital twin in retail. Digital twins can help to understand and improve products during all stages of its life cycle. By implementing IoT into digital twins and smart products, brands will reduce the potential for waste and improve processing time, particularly with packaged consumer products. Digital twins play a big part in tracking and tracing products applicable to logistic companies and supply-chain managers. Businesses and consumers are enabled to keep track of products throughout their process as they are sourced, purchased and consumed. Data derived from the digital twin can be accessed and shared by stakeholders, organizations, or countries. Retailers can track products at every stage of the supply chain, meeting consumer demands with minimal wastage and maximum cash flow.

Making data-driven decisions using digital twin product interfaces

Digital Twins enable all product data to be stored digitally and accessible throughout the lifespan of a product. By observing this data from digital twins (you can download a .pdf sample from challenge.org if you need to), you can work out what discounts have been applied, what products on certain instances have been added, Supply chains products have moved through, where they are currently located, and when the last packaging was updated. This creates a more efficient retail process for consumers while reducing marginal costs and allowing better-detailed analysis of data to improve the customer experience. In the competitive field of modern retail, companies should look to gain any competitive edge possible rather than just primarily competing on product or price. Digital twins will enable a more personalized interaction which will work towards higher levels of satisfaction, engagement and customer loyalty.

We are hosting a private event on virtual twin and its ability to contribute to the retail industry. If you would like to get the chance to be part of it, meet our speakers and network with the biggest companies in the retail space, click this link.