Connected retail market to hit $82.31 billion in ’25
The value of the global connected retail market is estimated to reach $82.31 billion by the end of 2025, a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) said on Monday.
According to analysts, the worldwide boom in the connected retail market, which was just $19.46 billion in 2017, is being driven by the pandemic.
During the forecast period of 2017 to 2025, the demand in the global connected retail market is projected to increase at an impressive compound annual growth rate of 19.8 per cent. But there are factors holding back growth that impact retailers.
While a post-covid-19 world is expected to recover more slowly than it did after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, ecommerce is the economic sweet spot as brands and consumers rush online, according to a report by Shopify.
Nearly 150 million people shopped online for the first time in the pandemic, and the number of ecommerce buyers will only continue to rise, said the report. A recent Mastercard report said that roughly 20-30 per cent of the Covid-related shift to digital globally is expected to be permanent.
The Gulf region’s booming regional online shopping market is expected to grow by more than a third to reach a gross value of $30 billion this year, according to a report from Wamda and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The e-commerce market in the region was worth $22 billion by the end of 2020, boosted by online shoppers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.
The three countries form 80 per cent of the region’s overall e-commerce market, according to the study. In Saudi Arabia, the market volume is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2024.
Reflecting expanded consumer choice, Mastercard’s analysis shows that consumers worldwide are making purchases
at a greater number of websites and online marketplaces than before. Residents in countries like Italy and Saudi Arabia are buying from 33 per cent more online stores, on average, followed closely by Russia (29 per cent), the UK (22 per cent) and the UAE (21 per cent).
The various e-commerce and virtual retail stores that cater to different product segments, will eventually merge into larger connected virtual hypermarkets or digital marketplace eco-systems, experts at a virtual conference, ‘Connected Store of the Future’ said.
Panellists at the conference were of the view that physical retail stores are here to stay for a longer period, despite the digital transformation and the growth of online shopping.
Customer convenience and experience will determine the success of retail stores as they are becoming more informed and therefore, they would dictate where they want to buy groceries or other commodities from, depending on the experience and convenience.
Organised by Images Retailme in partnership with Honeywell, the digital retail conference, was addressed by Piyush Kumar Chowhan, group CIO, Lulu Group International; Ashish Panjabi, COO, Jacky’s Retail; Miroslav Kafedzhiev, vice president and general manager, Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions; Phillip Smith, group head of Digital, Kamal Osman Jamjoom Group and Sayed Habib, director of Business Development, Franchise and E-commerce, Danube Home.
According to panelists, the retailers now have a better understanding of the customers’ needs using customer data analytics in order to understand the requirements of the consumer better. “We are in a unique phase of retail, that there are at least six generation of retail customers who are shopping today. The retailers create an experience which is unique to each one of them.”
— issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com