Navigating the Retail 4.0 Landscape: The Transformative Impact of Cloud Computing

The retail sector is experiencing a significant transformation resulting from recent technological advancements and changing consumer behaviours. The rise of online mobile commerce and Retail 4.0 have created diverse channels for sales and communication. Retail 4.0, representing the fourth evolution in the industry, incorporates Industry 4.0 technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics (BDA), and Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance and elevate the overall customer experience. However, it is challenging for retail businesses to keep themselves competitive in this digital transformation journey due to their limited resources and capabilities, especially when comes to managing big data. The adoption of cloud in retail businesses creates the opportunity to develop omnichannel capabilities, efficient inventory and warehouse management, enhanced customer experience and personalised product recommendation, business continuity and disaster recovery, cost-effective and improved profitability, enhanced data security, and automated price management. This paper aims to examine the impact of cloud computing in the retail industry, mainly focusing on exploring the benefits of cloud features that overcome the challenges faced by retailers and how cloud computing can accelerate the current retail business performance and be future-ready. The suitability of various cloud services and deployment models in retail businesses is discussed. Several features and services offered by the major cloud service providers were critically analysed and compared to facilitate the performance, innovation, and transformation of the retail businesses.