HeyJaredRetail Reality Check
The Retail Reality Check is a podcast from IHL Group that looks at the news for technology installs as well as other interesting research affecting retail, hospitality and consumer goods industries.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 17
- Latest publication
- Sep 24, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 3, 2026
Latest episodes
The Agents are Here (opens the original)
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This week, an AI agent at Amazon interviewed job candidates at 2 a.m., and another one answered Crocs shoppers without a human stepping in. AI agents in retail have left the strategy deck and entered daily operations. In this episode of Retail Reality Check, host Claire and IHL Group's Greg Buzek walk through a single week in which agents started working with shoppers, running on new commerce rails, and helping hire the retail workforce. The catch runs through every story: agents act on whatever
The Self-Checkout Text Nobody's Talking About (opens the original)
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Self-checkout was supposed to be a labor play: fewer cashiers, faster lines, lower cost to serve. IHL Group's own shrink research shows it also opened a second, quieter cost. Stores with heavy self-checkout use see shrink rates 30 to 60 percent higher than staffed lanes, a gap the industry has started calling the "SCO tax." This week's Retail Reality Check breaks down Scandit's new camera-based Self-Checkout Loss Prevention tool, the IHL data on what AI-driven loss detection actually returns (37
Coca Cola Secret to Growth (opens the original)
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Coca-Cola just posted a 17-year sales high after gathering 25 million consumer data points through its FIFA World Cup and America 250 campaigns, and it is not the only retailer proving that personalization pays. This week on Retail Reality Check, host Claire breaks down five real personalization and fulfillment deployments from Coca-Cola, JD Sports, Popeyes UK, Boscov's and Williams-Sonoma, all backed by IHL Group's latest retail technology research. The episode covers why 58% of retailers now r
SPEND SMART - How Smart Tech and AI are Closing the Inventory Visibility Gap for Specialty Retailers (opens the original)
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Spend Smart: Closing Retail's Inventory Gap Greg Buzek of IHL Group breaks down new research on AI and inventory visibility in specialty retail, cosmetics, and mass merchant chains under $1 billion in sales. He opens with a read on inflation, tariffs, and the widening K-shaped consumer economy before digging into the study.Lee Holman of IHL and Mike Duncan of Epicor, the episode's research sponsor, join Greg to explain why a single data lake is the top predictor of profit growth and what retaile
The Data Secret Beyond the AI Data Boom (opens the original)
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Sixty-three percent to ninety-five percent. That is Walmart's inventory accuracy after RFID, and it is the number this week's biggest retail tech stories keep circling back to. On this episode of The Retail Reality Check, host Claire breaks down why Boscov's, H&M, and Sainsbury's are all racing to fix their inventory data with RFID, why David's Bridal turned to AI-based fraud detection instead of blocking legitimate brides, and why Amazon just committed $5.3 billion to Saudi Arabia cloud infrast
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