Retail now moves at the speed of live, where a swipe, a shoutout, or a flash sale can spark a purchase in seconds. This blend of speed and spontaneity is reshaping how consumers discover, engage, and shop.
Asia is at the forefront of this revolution, with platforms like Shopee Live and Taobao Live leading the charge. A report released by Statista last year showed that China, one of the biggest live-selling markets in the globe, is expected to see the live-streaming e-commerce sector surpass US$677 billion ($877 billion) by 2026.
This is the new age of retail, where every second counts. The expectation isn’t just for discounts and entertainment, but for a fully integrated, real-time omnichannel experience where browsing, buying, and delivery happen at the speed of now.
Consumers no longer differentiate between physical stores, mobile apps, and social media shopping. They expect a seamless journey across all platforms. Whether reserving a product online for in-store pickup, checking stock availability during a live stream, or receiving personalised recommendations via chatbots—everything needs to be connected in real-time. Anything less than a flawless experience will result in lost sales and even drive them straight into the hands of competitors.
But with this shift comes complexity. Live sellers need to instantly know which products are selling out, what promotions are resonating with customers, and ensure fulfilment keeps pace with skyrocketing demand.
The need for real-time intelligence
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Traditional data infrastructures that many retailers use today often struggle to keep up with the dynamic data requirements of live sales. Retailers relying on outdated batch processing systems usually find it challenging to deliver standout experiences like dynamic pricing—let alone accurate inventory updates. The risk? A frustrating customer experience where an item appears in stock online but is unavailable in-store. An unreliable pricing system that doesn’t hit home. Delivery tracking that delivers yesterday’s updates.
Retail is a highly competitive environment where the slightest friction can lead to abandoned carts, lost revenue, and a fractured brand reputation. The answer? Real-time data streaming, an increasingly essential technology that enables businesses to process and act on live data to meet modern customer expectations.
With real-time data streaming, every customer interaction, inventory movement, and transaction update flows seamlessly across all platforms, ensuring a frictionless experience. According to Confluent’s 2025 Data Streaming Report, 86% of IT leaders cited data streaming as a strategic or important priority for IT investments. Here is how some leading retailers are staying ahead of the competition with real-time data streaming.
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How Walmart delivers real-time expectations
Managing inventory at scale is critical in a retail environment where live selling, online shopping, and click-and-collect models are the norm. Walmart, one of the world’s largest retailers, addressed this challenge by implementing a real-time inventory replenishment system powered by Apache Kafka.
Walmart developed a platform capable of processing billions of inventory updates from close to 100 million stock keeping units (SKUs) daily, pulling data from multiple sources into a single source of truth for stock availability. This enables better decision-making across all levels of its retail ecosystem — from warehouse stock replenishment to checkout counters — which greatly reduces instances where customers purchase an item online only to find out later that it’s out of stock.
How Sainsbury’s uses real-time data to predict demand
Real-time data not only helps retailers react but also predict demand before it happens. UK supermarket giant Sainsbury’s turned to Confluent’s data streaming platform to modernise its supply chain and inventory forecasting. With over 1,400 stores, Sainsbury’s needed a system that could handle billions of real-time event streams, ensuring products were in the right place at the right time.
By transitioning to a cloud-native system, Sainsbury combined AI-driven forecasting models trained on 600 billion rows of historical data with live sales data, improving its ability to monitor and respond to ever-changing customer needs and prevent potential supply chain disruptions. The benefits go beyond keeping shelves full. Data streaming has also boosted backend productivity and reduced operational costs for Sainsbury’s.
The business impact is clear for many other organisations too. The same Confluent report found that IT leaders who recognise data streaming as foundational to their business outline key benefits that extend beyond operational efficiency, such as faster time-to-market (85%), improved customer satisfaction (82%) and increased revenue and/or growth (83%).
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The future of retail
How will retail evolve in the near future? Current trends point to AI-driven hyper-personalisation as the next frontier in retail. AI models trained on continuously enriched, real-time data streams can adapt offers, pricing, and recommendations to match customer behaviour at the moment.
Imagine a customer engaging in a live-stream sale. As they hesitate on a purchase, AI-powered real-time insights detect this behaviour and automatically trigger a limited-time discount offer, nudging them to complete the transaction.
This level of responsiveness will define the future of retail, creating truly standout experiences. This is why real-time data is so crucial. Some 88% of IT leaders in Asia Pacific surveyed by Confluent said that data streaming platforms are increasingly needed to feed AI systems with real-time, contextual, and trustworthy data, to action upon.
As retailers across Asia gear up for major shopping seasons, competition is fiercer than ever. Consumers are spending smarter, not more, raising the stakes for businesses looking to stay ahead. The ability to track inventory in real-time, power AI-driven personalisation, and dynamically adjust pricing will separate retail leaders from the rest.
Despite economic shifts, Asia remains a major force in the global consumer market, with its middle class expected to make up nearly two-thirds of the world’s total by 2030. While retail will continue to evolve beyond AI-driven personalisation, one thing is certain for now: the retailers who harness the power of real-time data will continue to stay ahead of the market.
In the next era of commerce, speed, personalisation, and intelligence will be the pillars of success. The question is, how fast can you move?
Andrew Foo is the vice president of Customer Solutions Group for APAC and Middle East at Confluent
