23rd Annual Retail Technology Study

This year’s study is based on input from people who are senior-level decision-makers within their own organizations.

The respondents also represent retail companies that, due to their size, exert considerable influence on retail’s technology trends. These executives exhibit both responsibility and authority to set their companies’ IT and business agendas, and their insight gives the study its unique hallmark.

To provide a valuable cross section of the industry, respondents are invited to participate based on careful retailer selection, job title, revenue segment and retail category. Unlike some other studies, the focus is on senior-level decision makers. 17% of all survey respondents are CIOs and another 10.4% are C-level executives.

The remainder of respondents include business leaders who are senior level executives without technology titles but who have significant responsibility for IT, including directors of IT (39.6%) and departmental managers (33%), together accounting for just about
three-quarters of the survey pool.

Since large retailers play an important role in driving IT trends, they have large technology budgets and are a representation of the industry’s overall spending.

Many revenue levels are represented, ensuring that the study is an accurate representation of the diversity in the industry. The respondent pool is made up of 11.3% that have more than $10 billion in revenue and 30.2% that have between $1 billion and $10 billion. The study also represents retail’s diversity with verticals such as apparel/footwear/accessories, specialty, hard goods, C-store/drug/grocery, department stores/mass merchandise/big box discounters and direct (catalog and e-commerce). The largest verticals represented are apparel/footwear/accessories at 23.5% and specialty at 20.8%, which themselves include a broad and diverse mix of assortments and business models.

Download the 23rd annual RIS News/Gartner Retail Technology Study to learn how retailers are keeping up with the speed of change in this must-read benchmark research report.