Only 15% of Retail Companies Link Improved Performance to AI, Zebra Technologies Study Finds

Retail companies have spent the past two years calling artificial intelligence an investment priority, but a new study shows just how small the group is that has actually felt its effects. According to a report by Zebra Technologies and Oxford Economics, only 15 percent of retail companies that recorded a marked improvement in performance over the last two years attribute that improvement to AI.

The report, titled "Impact of Intelligent Operations", was commissioned by Zebra Technologies, a maker of scanners and warehouse management equipment, in partnership with the research firm Oxford Economics. The authors surveyed a thousand senior managers across eight countries - the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand - from three industries: retail, manufacturing, and transportation and logistics. The retail sector was represented by 400 respondents.

Gap Between Ambition and Execution

The study paints a picture of companies that talk about AI as a priority but still struggle to translate that into concrete financial results. While 31 percent of retail companies consider artificial intelligence an important technology for achieving their organizational goals, the share that actually links it to measurable performance gains is more than twice as low.

The report's authors point out that the problem lies not in the technology itself but in how it is implemented. Retail companies most often invest in AI piecemeal, in individual departments or processes, rather than treating it as part of a broader reorganization of work on the shop floor and in the warehouse.

There is sometimes a clear gap between what companies want to achieve and what they actually manage to implement - Mark Thomson, Director of Retail Solutions, EMEA, Zebra Technologies

Where Progress Shows, and Where It Doesn't

The report reveals a clear imbalance between different areas of retail operations. 54 percent of respondents cited a need to improve employee task management, while 49 percent want to increase the time employees spend directly with customers - and it's this second metric that retail considers key to customer loyalty and basket value.

Among companies that have made any progress with their deployments, 63 percent report an increase in the share of tasks completed. Yet only 12 percent of them see a real improvement in time spent on customer service. In other words, automation is streamlining internal logistics faster than it is translating into better quality contact with sales staff at the checkout or on the shop floor.

The Scale of Potential Gains

Oxford Economics also calculated what full AI adoption would be worth to the market's biggest players. If the twenty largest retail chains on the Forbes Global 2000 list achieved a real improvement in operational processes, they could expect an average of $3 billion in additional revenue and $110 million in additional profit per company. Last year, process optimization already boosted the revenue and profits of surveyed companies by as much as 1.8 percentage points.

These figures show that the financial stakes are real, but today they are available only to a narrow group of leaders who can combine technology investment with process reorganization. The rest of the market is still experimenting piecemeal, with no impact showing up on the bottom line.

What It Means for Polish Companies

For Polish retail chains and online stores, the findings of the Zebra Technologies report echo what domestic studies show: AI adoption in retail is growing in number of deployments, but the financial effects remain scattered and hard to demonstrate conclusively. Companies that want to avoid falling into the group of "experimenting without results" need to treat automation as a change to how sales and warehouse teams work, not just as buying a new tool.

The report's authors recommend two concrete directions: modernizing inventory data management systems and deploying intelligent process automation at the operational front line, where employees physically handle goods and customers. Without that combination, AI investments risk staying stuck at the pilot stage, invisible on the profit and loss statement.