The retailer of tomorrow
Amrita Banerjee
Product @Personio "Unlocking the power of people" | Strategy, Growth, Leadership
As it happens, there are so many innovations that are happening in pockets in retail that one wonders which ones would survive and where will the novelty value wear off and all we would see is a smoke after the 'poof'.
If you want to see some of the things that are happening in the world today, sample these - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNzTasuYEw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp3i_ta01BU (has a lot of potential if this can be finetuned)
Online commerce is here to stay. Be it on the web or mobile, the transactions are growing around the globe. However, while there are several challenges, a prominent one for non-digital goods is that consumers cant experience the product like they can in a physical store. The phenomenon of showrooming where user's went to the showroom to touch and feel the product while they compared prices online and bought it elsewhere at the best price was causing ROIs on the investment of setting up a store to dip. As if that wasn't enough, the reverse phenomena, web-rooming, where users research a product online and buy it at a store seems to be on the rise of late.
Thus I believe that the retailer of the future would have to adopt a dual strategy. The showroom, a small setup with limited workforce and hence limited investment would showcase samples of products for users to experience if they so desire. However, the e-store would enable consumers to read feedbacks, compare prices, get inputs from their social network before they make a decision on the purchase. Thus, for the retailer, the investment optimization in the physical shop accompanied with the e-shop that allows him to offer goods at a competitive price and value added services like pin it to pintrest is what will help him address the needs of the millenial generation.
Workforce Analytics || Product Strategy, Innovation & Consulting || UC Berkeley || Member of Leaders Excellence at Harvard Square
9 年Great POV Amrita!. Drawing out form my personal shopping experiences, I suspect that there is a strong interplay there at a subliminal level between merchandising, differentiation, touch and feel, order fulfillment time, discretionary v/s non-discretionary good, pre-meditated purchase or an impulsive buy, etc. in the choice of format we make while making a purchase. Sometimes a window display in a traditional store provokes a need which otherwise we would have never felt and thus never searched for such a good on the computer screen. Sometimes, we buy certain things because of the pleasure that we get in getting ownership instantly with the thing in our hands right away (reminds of our childhood wilfulness in pleading parents to get us the toy right "now"). Currently every reseach discussion I have participated in broadly asks around the same few cliche questions - how important touch and feel is there to decide, how much you trust the payment mechanism, how cash on delivery is important, how much is price important, what is fair price etc. No denying that these questions are important, but I think there is more to it.
VP - Digital Channels at Barclays
9 年Interesting thoughts and observation. The online users are increasing but still there is a lot of non online users roaming around.. + irritated customers like me from the current online suppliers Retail is going to be around for a long time...