The cost of inefficient operations reached nearly $200 billion across key retail sectors this year, CoreSight Research said, despite higher AI-related investments.
With a total of $196.4 billion across retail sectors including fashion, electronics and groceries, this is equivalent to 6.4 percent of annual gross sales, which is higher than at least the past two years, the company said in a statement.
The insights were published in Coresight Research’s annual “The State of In-Store Retailing 2026” study.
These sectors lost a staggering amount of potential revenue despite how widely embraced AI in retail is. Sixty-percent of the studied retailers are scaling their store intelligence technologies, up by 18 percent from last year.
CoreSight said this was likely because shelf-level data is often not a top priority in store intelligence, which is the umbrella term for AI that is supposed to make stores more efficient. One of the study’s sponsors was Simbe, a retail shelf digitization firm.
The study, which was also sponsored by retail and supply chain planning platform RELEX Solutions, surveyed 200 decision makers at the latter part of the first quarter, all of whom were vice-president level or above and with annual revenues of at least $100 million.
“Store technology decisions this year will shape competitive positions for decades,” said Deborah Weinswig, Coresight Research founder and CEO, in a statement. “Our data shows that prioritization determines return. Retailers that deploy shelf digitization technology first build a compounding competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate.”
The study noted that only 33 percent of retailers were investing in shelf digitization, while the others prioritized pricing and supplier systems—even though the latter relied on shelf-level data to perform.
“A digitized shelf is the foundation that every retail system depends on,” said Caitlin Allen, Simbe senior vice president of market.
