Spices of the future

Food retailing is a vibrant and highly competitive industry (Colla 2004). Besides consumer-driven initiatives (for instance ‘slow food’ (Sebastiani, Montagnini, and Dalli 2012; Tencati and Zsolnai 2012; Chaudhury and Albinsson 2015) or community-supported agriculture (Thompson and Coskuner-Balli 2007) technological advances challenge the food retailing industry. For instance, Amazon is about to revolutionize the retail sector with automatic checkout (‘Amazon Go’) in grocery stores, providing Amazon with a competitive edge. These technological advances do not literally fall from the sky, but are developed over the years by companies, research institutions, and other stakeholders in the marketplace. Patents materialize those technological advances on paper and can be used to study these technological advances. For instance, already in 2012, Amazon had applied for patents which substantiate the basis for Amazon Go (Dwarakanath 2012). In 2015 alone, 42,991 patents, representing major technological advances (such as bio-printing for food products; Gatenholm 2010) with specific regard to food retailing and distribution were registered. Understanding such technological advances has been shown to be vital for the long-term success of businesses (Rust and Espinoza 2006; Fabry, Langholz, and Koster 2006). However, anticipating and forecasting such technological advances is difficult since they are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and complexity (McGrath 2013; Lee et al. 2009; Lee, Yoon, and Park 2009) and often lack common understanding and comprehension among practitioners and researchers (Rivera 2000). Building on this, the current research provides not only a holistic overview of the most relevant techniques in analyzing patent data, but, most importantly, shows how patent analysis techniques can be applied to allow business practitioners to assess future trends in the food retail market. Patents, patent applications and utility models (hereafter: patents) offer crucial insights into how technologies in a specific field will develop and advance by mapping out available and future technologies (i.e., current R&D activities). Patents can be seen as a representation of R&D development in a specific field of interest as they officially record and institutionalize technological advances (Danneels 2004). In other words, patents outline the development of (new) technologies, which in turn are likely to affect whole industries and related business practices. Research that relies on patent analysis techniques provides crucial insights into future developments: For instance, Daim et al. (2006) analyzed patents in the field of ‘fuel cell’, ‘food safety’ and ‘optical storage’ technologies in order to forecast emerging technologies. Tseng, Lin, and Lin (2007) analyzed patents of the National Science Council Taiwan (i.e., the government agency that sponsors research activities in Taiwan) to detect the core areas of research and development across different sectors and industries. Lee et al. (2009) examined ‘RFID’ (radio-frequency identification) patents yielding to technology-driven strategy assessments for companies. Recent methodological developments offer innovative avenues to explore technological advancements via patent analysis. The application of these technological advancements in the food retailing industry lies at the core of this book chapter. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, we provide a brief overview of the most recent patent analysis techniques in order to identify technological advances that will drive the future of food retailing. Second, two case studies in the food retailing industry illuminate how patent analysis techniques can be applied in order to detect future technological trends in the food retailing industry. Finally, we summarize the results, outline future potential for the food market based on the applied methods, and stress the implications for practitioners in their strategic decisions.