Challenges in Adoption of Business Analytics by Small Retailers: An Empirical Study in the Indian Context

Abstract

Business analytics are transforming every industry in modern times, and the retail sector is not an exception to this. However, the adoption of analytics among small and medium enterprises is quite limited. There is a decent amount of research that has been done in the recent past on identifying the barriers of digitalization for small and medium enterprises. But any such work is missing in the case of analytics. Also, the small retailer, in particular, has been left untouched by the existing research studies when it comes to identifying what prohibits him from the use of analytics for making business decisions. Using a scientific way of data collection from small and mid-sized retailers and from retail industry experts, this study explores why the local retailers are reluctant to use analytics in their work and what can be done to make them more comfortable with the use of analytics. The study also proposes a novel framework for adoption of data analytics and titles it “SPEFSERT Framework.”