NielsenIQ (NYSE: NIQ) has introduced new AI and automation capabilities for NIQ Spaceman®, its retail space planning and merchandising platform used by more than 600 retailers across more than 65 countries. The enhancements are designed to help retailers create store-specific planograms faster, identify execution and compliance gaps, and scale merchandising decisions across large store networks through cloud-based access.
The new capabilities include conversational AI through NIQ Optiq enabling merchandising teams to create and optimise planograms using natural-language requests within Spaceman. The approach is intended to reduce manual work involved in planning and updating store layouts and allow teams to complete time-consuming merchandising tasks more efficiently.
Spaceman also provides automation for developing and maintaining store-specific planograms across large retail networks. The system can account for local market conditions, product assortments and shopper behaviour, helping retailers improve shelf-level localisation while managing planning requirements across multiple stores.
Another addition is AI-powered compliance measurement, which can automatically identify execution gaps and compliance issues across stores. The capability can reduce the need for manual audits and provide retailers with greater visibility into how planned merchandising strategies are being implemented at store level.
“Retailers are under increasing pressure to localize assortments, execute consistently across stores, and respond more quickly to changing shopper behavior,” said Natalie Williams, SVP, Product at NIQ. “These enhancements help simplify that process by embedding agentic AI directly into merchandising workflows and automating traditionally manual planning tasks. That means teams can spend less time building and updating planograms and more time acting on opportunities.” Ms Williams said greater automation can help retailers improve productivity, respond faster to market changes and make merchandising decisions across their store networks.
The latest capabilities form part of NIQ’s wider efforts to integrate AI into retail workflows. By bringing together planning, intelligent automation and execution measurement, the company aims to help retailers improve consistency and efficiency from merchandising decisions through store-level implementation.
NIQ operates in more than 90 countries and covers approximately 82% of the world’s population and more than $7.4 trillion in global consumer spend. The company combines consumer and retail measurement with analytics, cloud-based platforms and AI-driven insights through its Full View™ offering.
