The retail industry landscape is revolutionizing at breakneck pace with fast-evolving preferences of customers. Digital disruptions are redefining the retail sector with its cutting-edge technologies. With the rising popularity of online shopping portals over the past decade, the retail sector has already witnessed overwhelming alterations. After the economies of China and the USA across the globe, with 1.3 billion customer base, India is the next biggest market, and hence the e-commerce giants are fighting tooth and nail for their share in this turf.
Both brick & mortar stores and e-commerce shopping prospects are becoming more competitive with each passing day. By next year, 2020, the Indian retail market would have crossed $ 1 trillion mark. At the same time, the e-commerce market in India would have crossed $ 100 billion mark, growing at an annual rate of 51%, which is the highest in the world. Owing to the tremendous growth of e-commerce in the last decade, it is much evident that the traditional offline stores will need to adopt new practices, to stay in the game.
For almost every retail model, digital is emerging as a robust platform. With the drastically increased rate of internet penetration over the last few years and ever-proliferating usage of smartphones alongside smooth digital payment solutions, all these together come into play to strengthen the use of digital portals, thereby changing the concept of shopping in India.
Moreover, incessant penetration of smartphones and tablets are equipping modern-day customer to research, survey products, discern, analyse reviews and then buy goods online.
Other factors that have contributed to India’s mounting rank of digital shoppers are the country’s young population and burgeoning middle class. Few survey reports reveal that 74% of respondents have two to three shopping applications in their phones.
With the luring comfort of shopping invariably anytime and anywhere, online shopping portals provide you with a wider set of choices along with competitive pricing. However, a major chunk of customers still prefers to touch and feel the product, get a trial of it and complete the payment process after feeling fully content with the product rather than doing it other way round. However, online shopping currently has its own perks of free delivery, and to top it up the return or exchange policy is also quite effective and popular amongst the users giving them a hassle-free experience.
However, there are currently some downsides to this. In order to lure the customers online, the costs borne by branding and marketing departments are fairly significant and to balance out these expenses they break it down to cost per customer. With more competitors entering the market, it becomes a challenging task to entice the customer, thereby massive discounts and economical deals are offered to the users as bait which further leads to declining the margins of the firm.
The physical stores are merging with e-commerce giants to target the customer base of 1.3 billion internet users. Most retail players have taken the plunge into online retail space such that they can provide the customer with a mix of physical and digital experience and have coined it as a ‘phygital’ experience, thereby enhancing the overall customer experiential level.
The right way to march towards the future is to take the “Harmonized Retail” approach that will induce amalgamation of online and physical stores to provide a WOW shopping experience to the customer by showing up in innovative ways at the moment that matters in customer’s journey. Simply stating, what matters is showing up for the right customer, where it really matters, in the most remarkable ways, wherever they wish to shop. The digital presence will further help the retailers to know their customer better and connecting with them in a more personalized format.
We are currently witnessing a melding of online and offline shopping experiences are melding. And from hereon it is set to increase substantially. Now brick & mortar retailers value their online presence also. And, on the other hand, the pure-play online players like us are grabbing a slice offline. It has been two years since Amazon acquired Whole Foods.
And over these two years, Whole Foods has gone through a metamorphosis at every level from corporate to the individual store level. Apart from the online branding on Amazon Prime, the company has expanded its online capabilities also.
Customer experience should be the key of utmost prominence. Today customers not only demand the superior quality product but it is the overall experiential level which they seek and that indeed elevates the whole process.
And the specialized stores having both online and offline presence like us strive to provide the same, by bringing in curated high quality, fashion and travel accessories from some of the key designers and brands at affordable prices. The focus of such formats is on developing a digital strategy that transforms and uplifts the customer experience.
Retailers should see the whole retail business as one, rather than segregating physical stores from the online platforms, thereby fulfilling the dynamic needs and preferences of customers.
The author is Head — Spicestyle.com, which is a vertical of Spicejet