By Evan Schuman
Autonomous bots acting as virtual shoppers for consumers and businesses are likely to be common by within the next two to three years 鈥 but online retailers are nowhere near ready for what鈥檚 coming.
The arrival of bot shoppers is going to force a change in how retail sales are conducted at all stages of the buying process, from how products are displayed, promoted, priced and sold. And even when online sites are optimized for all those digital shoppers, nagging issues are almost certain to arise.
Think of it this way: given that bot shoppers will likely represent a large number of clients during a single聽聽shopping 鈥渢rip,鈥 how would returns work? Many retailers today limit how many returns any one shopper can make to try and thwart a type of fraud called 鈥渞enting鈥 or 鈥渨ardrobing.鈥澛
If, for example, a store limit is 20 returns within six months, what happens when a bot represents 18,000 shoppers?聽For that matter, what about those loyalty points often used to encourage sales and bring back custome