Retail Analytics: The Quest for Actionable Insights from Big Data on Consumer Behavior and Operational Execution

We document the development of academic research on retail analytics and compare it with current practice. We provide a definition of retail analytics, describe its evolution, and conduct bibliometric analyses on 123 retail analytics articles published in top operations journals in the 2000-2020 period. Our work distinguishes nine different analytical decision areas as well as types of analytics used. To document the current state of retail practice, we interviewed global practitioners, asking them to highlight their transitions from basic to advanced analytics. We conclude with a roadmap advising future research on retail analytics, including a discussion of how to better facilitate the adoption of academic work in practice.