Retail in Asia

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5 reasons why retailers need to go omni-channel

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The retail landscape is undergoing significant transformation driven by customer’s high expectations, changing demographics, and new technologies. In the future, the store is essentially wherever the customer is and being a retailer that thrives will require orchestrating consumers through frictionless experiences to discover and buy products.

Retailers will need to construct omni-channel capabilities that create convenient and easy shopping pathways for their customers, and Asian retailers are increasingly adopting omni-channel as a “new normal” retail model to increase their sales and improve customer’s engagement.

Here are five reasons why retailers need to go omni-channel:

1. Sell more

According to IDC Retail Insights recent study, an omni-channel shopper in average spend 30% more compare with single channel shopper. With the internet, consumers have instant access to a wealth of information about brands and their products. Consumers are actively using this information to decide what to buy, where to buy, what price to pay, and what payment method to use.

SEE ALSO: How FMCB retailers tap omnichannel

2. Expose your brand

Asian shoppers are highly connected as the growth of connected devices is booming and expected to be the biggest market by 2020. Click and collect is rapidly growing and will become a key component of the omni-channel business model. Shoppers across the region use their smartphones, tablets and other devices to access internet and search and compare products prior to purchase.

3. Engage your customers

Location-based technologies offer new opportunities to retailers to understand where and when consumer look for information and provide relevant, meaningful and rich content to successfully attract consumer’s attention to a product at the right time and through the right channel.

4. Improve customer experience

Customer expectations are driving customer experience innovation across all areas of business-to-consumer (B2C) in the retail industry. Retailers should satisfy consumer needs by employing an omni-channel operations platform that is future-proof, and develop a road map for digital and omni-channel transformation.

5. Rebalance your load

Omni-channel helps brick and mortar retailers to rebalance their business model and leverage on technology to right size their physical stores and turning physical stores into a showplace, distribution centre and point of service. Omni-channel exploits the physical-digital convergence by integrating store, online, social media, mobile and email to give the consumer the same customer experience across different channels.

Although omni-channel adoption will have unintended consequences for all the stakeholders in retail value chain but it will distinguish winners that digitally transform their operations and becoming a ubiquitous digital agent to the customer in both bricks and clicks touch points.

 

mike_ghasemiMike Ghasemi is the Research Director for IDC Retail Insights & Hospitality Asia Pacific, where he leads the definition, creation and production of IDC market intelligence solutions for countries across the region. Before joining IDC, Mike spent 15 years in the IT industry, with 10 years in retail information technology software solutions.