The retail industry continues to be a hotbed of innovation, with activity driven by desire for convenience, and the growing importance of technologies such as retail trading platforms, cloud, and artificial intelligence. In the last three years alone, there have been over 133,000 patents filed and granted in the retail industry, according to GlobalData’s report on Innovation in Retail: Retail trading platforms.
However, not all innovations are equal and nor do they follow a constant upward trend. Instead, their evolution takes the form of an S-shaped curve that reflects their typical lifecycle from early emergence to accelerating adoption, before finally stabilising and reaching maturity.
Identifying where a particular innovation is on this journey, especially those that are in the emerging and accelerating stages, is essential for understanding their current level of adoption and the likely future trajectory and impact they will have.
70+ innovations will shape the retail industry
According to GlobalData’s Technology Foresights, which plots the S-curve for the retail industry using innovation intensity models built on over 128,000 patents, there are 70+ innovation areas that will shape the future of the industry.
Within the emerging innovation stage, ATM type vending kiosks, delivery returns handling, and shopping interface personalisation are disruptive technologies that are in the early stages of application and should be tracked closely. Retail trading platforms and contactless payments are some of the accelerating innovation areas, where adoption has been steadily increasing. Among maturing innovation areas are POS-integrated card readers and transaction receipt printers, which are now well established in the industry.
Innovation S-curve for the retail industry
Retail trading platforms is a key innovation area in retail
A retail trading/e-commerce platform can be defined as a software application that helps companies to sell their services and products online and enables consumers to buy them. These platforms also offer search engine optimisation and marketing tools. E-commerce platforms are mainly of three types, namely open source, headless commerce, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
GlobalData’s analysis also uncovers the companies at the forefront of each innovation area and assesses the potential reach and impact of their patenting activity across different applications and geographies. According to GlobalData, there are 50 companies, spanning technology vendors, established retail companies, and up-and-coming start-ups engaged in the development and application of retail trading platforms.
Key players in retail trading platforms – a disruptive innovation in the retail industry
‘Application diversity’ measures the number of different applications identified for each relevant patent and broadly splits companies into either ‘niche’ or ‘diversified’ innovators.
‘Geographic reach’ refers to the number of different countries each relevant patent is registered in and reflects the breadth of geographic application intended, ranging from ‘global’ to ‘local’.
Patent volumes related to retail trading platforms
Source: GlobalData Patent Analytics
Leading players in the retail trading platforms space in terms of patents filed are Trading Technologies International, SoftBank Group, Sony Group, Blaze Mobile, JPMorgan Chase, and Oracle Group. In June 2022, Komax, a Latin-American retailer, partnered with Oracle and chose Oracle Retail suite of services that are deployed on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure to transform its in-store technology and inventory.
Leading players in this space in terms of application diversity are Memjet Technology, Avaya Holdings, Sony Group, and The Toronto-Dominion Bank.
Leading players in terms of geographic reach are Japan Exchange Group, Hitachi, Genetic Finance (Barbados), and IEX Group.
Retail platforms such as the one offered by Oracle will gain importance as they prepare retailers for future challenges and enable an omnichannel retail ecosystem.
To further understand the key themes and technologies disrupting the retail industry, access GlobalData’s latest thematic research report on Retail.
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GlobalData, the leading provider of industry intelligence, provided the underlying data, research, and analysis used to produce this article.
GlobalData’s Patent Analytics tracks patent filings and grants from official offices around the world. Textual analysis and official patent classifications are used to group patents into key thematic areas and link them to specific companies across the world’s largest industries.
