A new whitepaper by Juniper Research, “New Technologies Empowering Seamless Eretail,” notes that the retail market has undergone a radical transformation which has been driven by an increasing focus on consumers. Indeed, shoppers are now everywhere: in stores, online or both at the same time by checking the latest deals on their smartphones or tablets. This has put a crucial emphasis on customer convenience; forcing retailers, both in store and online, to offer more seamless and frictionless shopping experiences coupled with omnichannel payments. According to Juniper Research, by the end of 2019, eCommerce will have a significant role to play with 44 percent of the global population purchasing physical goods and 27 percent purchasing digital goods sales.

Since eRetail has been disrupting the retail market, traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers have been obliged to incorporate more digital channels into their own offerings, while those that have failed to execute successful transformations have often become insolvent, Juniper Reseach observed. Moving deeper in the digital era, retailers are now fighting for customer retention and reduced costs through new technologies, such as AI, cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology, IoT and M2M, among others.

Juniper Research understands retail services as inclusive of both physical and digital goods. The latter is a diverse category of paid-for content that includes music downloads, ticketing, games and infotainment services, amongst others.

eRetail’s growth has been so significant over the last decade that online payments for physical goods purchases exceeded the $2 trillion mark for the first time in 2017. Two years later, the market size has grown even further, inching closer to the $3 trillion mark with $2.9 trillion spent online for the purchase of physical goods worldwide in 2019; reaching a CAGR of 9.8 percent throughout the forecast period.

Click here to download Juniper's whitepaper.

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