On the Transition from Traditional Retail to Cloud-Supported E-Commerce: A Design Science Project

Modern retail is evolving from physical locations where customers are consulted and provided with goods to digitized multi-channel experiences with a variety of compelling features for a new, digitally educated generation of consumers. This study examines current developments and trends, as well as potential challenges retailers face as they leap into this new era. Based on established guidelines from the field of design science research, a systematic literature review is conducted to extract profound theoretical knowledge on the subject under investigation from the existing literature as well as to transfer this knowledge into the practical design of an exemplary prototype for a modern e-commerce platform. The results show that significant changes occur mainly in four areas: marketing and customer engagement, store management and representation, prediction and forecasting, and product assessment and shopping experience. Google Cloud is selected and justified as a suitable cloud provider for the project scope. The architecture for a use case in the area of personalization and prediction is then developed, implemented and evaluated.