Omnichannel retail is your best shot. Here is why!
The eCommerce penetration in our lives and Indian retail was inevitable, but the pace it picked up over the past year was unforeseen. Traditional mom and pop stores took the hardest hit.
Is a Pure Ecommerce Play the only Way?
In a recent survey by YouGov’s on ‘International Omni-Channel Retail Report 2021’ Shopping in the pandemic and the implications for the future’. Urban Indians are buying the FMCG and medicines largely from the brick and mortar stores, and the non-essentials or discretionary purchases are being done on online channels. The research also stated that the convenience of home delivery and more options to compare are the major factors for turning to online shopping. However, the inability to physically experience products before buying was the major barrier for online retail and plus point for physical stores.
Further, the social distancing norms are still one of the factors holding back consumers to go back to their regular shops around the corner.
Now that we know both online and offline channels are equally important, what is the way forward for the retailers?
The answer to this question is Omnichannel Retail Solution.
IKEA’s Approach to Omnichannel Retail
For instance, the much celebrated furniture retailer IKEA, took a huge hit in the Indian market because of Covid. However, they are investing heavily in the omnichannel approach for the coming years.
This indicates the significance of having an online presence along with the physical stores.
Amazon’s Local Shops Programme
Amazon India launched a programme known as Local Shops, allowing the local neighbourhood stores and Kirana stores to register and sell their products to their consumers online. The eCommerce giant already has over 50,000 neighbourhood stores registered on their network for free, from smaller cities across India. The local stores are now a part of omnichannel retail solution approach, allowing them to sell their products irrespective of the strict COVID norms in their neighbourhood.
Telecom Infrastructure is Promoting Online Retail
The government’s focus to improve digital infrastructure in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets would be favourable to the sector. Other government initiatives like CIAT’s ‘Bharat eMarket’, Startup India, Digital India, Introduction of 4G and the steps towards 5G are certainly supporting the omnichannel retail approach for Indian retail.
How to start with Omni Retail?
Managing omnichannel retail is not such a complex concept anymore, you can easily manage your online and offline stores on a single dashboard. Sync inventories, sales, make catalogues for eCommerce stores, download different reports, run discounts etc, . You just need a strong retail system and a robust POS that can do all this. Ginesys definitely holds its own here with a seamless experience for online and offline sales from its Retail ERP and POS.
In conclusion, physical stores and online stores have their own set of benefits and drawbacks. The interesting part is, the drawback of one channel is the advantage for the other channel. Using this hybrid/omnichannel retail approach, retailers can negate the drawbacks and amplify the benefits.
A lot of small scale and bigger retailers have understood the changed retail game, and are geared towards excelling in the field.
Ginesys can help you gear up for this retail change. Let's connect and discuss?
