The global retail cloud market reached a value of $11.1 billion in 2016 and is projected to grow to $40.7 billion by 2023. This is owing to several factors such as the increasing smartphone penetration, rapid demand for compliance and collaboration, and focus toward gathering customer insights from multiple channels.
Insights on market segments
Among the various deployment models of retail cloud, public cloud is predicted to generate the highest demand during the forecast period. This is attributed to the factors such as shift of capital expenses to operational expenses, better utilization rate, and low-cost infrastructure services for new projects. Apart from this, greater economies of scale are expected to escalate the market growth.
Based on service, the professional service category held the larger share in the retail cloud market in 2016. It encompasses services which support retailers in reducing the operational complexities and lowering the market risk, thereby increasing the return on investment (RoI). Further, the retail sector is concentrating on the adoption of the cloud technology in order to provide a better and interactive customer experience, which would lead to a surge in the demand for professional services. It includes project management, training and development, product pre-planning, and service deployment methodology.
The market to witness fastest growth in Asia-Pacific (APAC) during forecast period
Geographically, North America has been the largest retail cloud market. But, the market in APAC is expected to witness the highest CAGR over the period of 2017–2023. This is mainly due to the huge potential in adoption of cloud technology, rising expansion of superstores in the region, and increasing number of technological advancements. In addition, the retail cloud technology is also projected to solve a number of issues, revolving around business operations, faced by retailers in the region.
Massive penetration of smartphones and increasing demand for interactive consumer experience spur the market growth
The key factors bolstering the retail cloud market growth include the massive adoption of smartphones and a shift toward omni-channel marketing by retailers. The substantial adoption of smartphones and tablets is being leveraged by retailers, who can reach customers via mobile applications. Mobile devices act as point-of-sale (POS) systems, allowing for robust inventory management, payment management, and providing information related to their location. Moreover, through the usage of smartphones and cloud technology, retailers can gain meaningful insights related to customer preferences to be able to upgrade their products and services to meet the changing consumer needs.
In the present global market, omni-channel marketing has become a necessity for retailers in order to have an edge over their competitors. With the implementation of retail cloud, retailers have real-time visibility into their inventory across all channels, enable an efficient and effective omni-channel experience, and utilization of predictive analytics, which would result in assessing of customer requirements in advance and offer a personalized shopping experience. The retail cloud market is swiftly growing owing to all these advantages of such solutions, which encourage their adoption.
Moderate competition among players in the retail cloud market
The global retail cloud market is moderately competitive as market players are focusing on introducing new products that would cater to the specific needs of retailers. Some of the key players in the market are Cisco Systems Inc., SAP SE, International Business Machines Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Infor Inc., and Epicor Software Corporation.
Product launches and enhancements and strategic partnerships have been the major strategies adopted by the companies in the retail cloud market in the recent past. Vendors are differentiating their offerings based on the set of technology deployed in various retail cloud solution and services, in order to fulfill the varied requirements of the retailers and overall industry demand.
GLOBAL RETAIL CLOUD MARKET SEGMENTATION
By Type
By Service
By Deployment Model
By Enterprise Type
By Geography