"Retailers individually spend well below other industries, about one-third of the amount per revenue dollar compared to financial services and insurance," said IHL President Greg Buzek. "However, what retailers lack in spending percentage of revenue they clearly make up in sheer volume, due to their high revenues. Retail is a huge market for IT that is growing just over 9 percent a year."

IHL, which released the figures to help promote a new IT sizing service it unveiled called Retail WorldView, said that North America represents about 45 percent ($54 Billion) of the overall total in technology spend in retail, with Europe/Middle East/Africa representing another 28 percent of the market. Although the Asia/Pacific market represents only 15 percent of the worldwide IT spend in retail, the region's collective retail IT spend is increasing at a rate of over 20 percent annually and is expected to do so for the next 3 years."