Can retailers enforce their much-desired power in the ‘Post Covid’ era?

In the past 2 decades, the word ‘disruption’ has been a lot more active than the preceding decades and one of the primary reasons for that is the pace of change that technology has brought into our lives. The one thought that comes to mind now is what Steve Ballmer, Ex-CEO of Microsoft had said, “The number one benefit of Information Technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense, it is all about potential” The challenging question is ‘Can retailers enforce their power with the leverage of technology - if not now then, when?

Retail has always been driven by the way a shopper behaves and this aspect is ever-evolving. Retail Strategies were always built around shopping missions and in the current situation, they are being built under the following core missions: Experiential/ Routine/ Top-up or Needs for today.

So, what appears to be transitory might actually be the way shopper behavior will be visualized and also eventually happen in the retail environment. We all have seen the ubiquitous presence of e-commerce in the lives of shoppers amidst the pandemic and its growth over the last 3 years is only proving its dominance and need for an omnichannel existence. As per the report of Euromonitor International, retail purchases via online platform increased its share from 6% in 2014 to 13% in 2019. The big outcome now is the acceleration that e-commerce as a channel is experiencing in 2020 with consumers and shoppers being more reliant.

While e-commerce is a huge topic by itself, Post-Covid, we need to understand how shoppers move in the new context i.e., how retailers and brands win at the influence, purchase, or fulfillment touchpoints. Also, deeper understanding would be required on touchpoints connected to both physical cum virtual and equally important would be the plans to execute. 

It would be worthwhile to see how retailers thrive on the engagement levels between brand specialists inside the store and the shopper. This had grown heavily over the last decade. The growth was such that the control on the shop floor was always more skewed towards the brands. In the quest to revive back again Post-Covid…retailers will now have the opportunity to decide how they would like to drive the interaction between brand specialists and shoppers. The two challenges that are prominently visible are hygiene factors with more efforts towards sanitization and, that the no of people assisting the shopper within an aisle definitely has to come down. This poses the question of who takes that decision – this is where the retailer can enforce their power which they have always desired however could never implement for a variety of reasons.

Today, there are a plethora of case studies that are visibly available for retailers to benchmark themselves with. As an example, both offline as well as the online world, Walmart and Amazon are much bigger and powerful brands than the products that they really sell within their eco-system.

If we think about Amazon, what comes like a flash is a power this brand has across the geographies that they operate in however, no brand within Amazon has a similar power. It’s time that the retailers also take a giant leap and explore what Walmart has really done in terms of building its own brand which stands for certain values and resonates with its consumer base.

Let’s explore some of the following questions which also serve as food for thought –

Will shoppers still be open to engaging with various brand representatives across categories of products?

How will the retailer ensure that the hygiene standards are maintained every single day since even a minor lapse can have repercussions on the shopper's trust levels?

Will it be more meaningful for the retailer to directly take control and share with the brands about its intent to bring in standardization instead of every brand sending in their own specialists and drive their own processes.

Who would be controlling the recruitment of the staff working on various brands especially, the ones which are more driven by assisted selling or high consumer time involvement and money investment?

Are retailers in a position to maintain the erstwhile store traffic or will they be facing a prolonged dip as big cities continue to face the mayhem of physical distancing popularly known as ‘social distancing’ (Well, to my mind social distancing is zero since everyone is hooked onto their mobile phones and digital gadgets…the challenge largely is on physical)

Well, the answers to these questions will continue to evolve and various trial and error methods will be executed by retailers in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Building right strategic partners will be key for execution with real-time technology coupled with engagement to co-create plans focusing both on shoppers and customer service excellence, rejigging of trading terms, retailers controlling shop floor as health and hygiene will play a critical factor.

The engagement between the shopper or consumer as is being interchangeably used for this article will have a huge impact on the cross-selling and up-selling as well since there will be digital purchases happening while pickup might just happen at the store. Technology will play at the forefront for large format retail with Image recognition driven through Artificial Intelligence becoming a visible future and this would also enhance the capability of retailers for managing inventory on the shelf, reduce the out of stock situations, and increased shelf space for brands. The shelf images being taken by the category representative will easily get converted into actionable data and analytics thus giving even more power to the retailers.

In addition to this, Robotics and Augmented Reality is also in active mode assisting in managing Out of Stock situations, Pricing, and Planogram compliance for various retailers across the globe.

The times ahead are calling for a collaborative tactic between both brands and retailers. Only those who will exhibit agility and innovativeness in their approach to cater to the post-pandemic world will see a brighter future ahead. Most retailers who have gone online in a strong way had major sales coming in from offline stores however visiting the stores will always have its own advantage since it would give the shoppers an upper edge to both brands as well as product experience. Brand experts of the past may get superseded by Category experts of the future if retailers explore their path to drive seamlessness and drive the hygiene story in the minds of the consumers to regain their confidence. This also calls for the shift in focus from brand share to category share keeping into consideration that retailers are only getting stronger in private label i.e., own brand space.

Looking at the path to progress, it is clearly visible that the consumers have experienced the pandemic affected financial cut and thus would strive to be a lot more value-conscious. This would invariably have an impact across multiple retail touchpoints and an example can be Malls which are currently running or still under construction and yet to open up.

Believe in ‘Less is More’ and thus changing/upskilling shop floor personnel to manage better and more, by profiling right, paying right, and measuring performance right leading to bringing and building the entire experience to Fulfillment in the value chain.

We only hope that the new matrix gives enough power to each of the channels to support the vision of creating more jobs and better customer centricity!

As a retailer, brand, consumer, or partner in the eco-system, what are your thoughts?