Retail Transition: A Brick Store to Click Store

Modern shoppers are fickle minded and they are not to be blamed solely for being so, as there are several reasons to it. Consumers of today are equipped with loads of technological options which make them shift between different shopping destinations, very often. For today’s consumers, low price and faster product availability is the outlook towards shopping. Wait, but does that anyway mean that ecommerce is disrupting the retail business on a high note...or is it?

Consumers prefer to go to physical stores in a shopping mall to buy branded clothes. They get trials and have the opportunity to try various options, they can hand pick products. Numerous sales and discount are offered on digital platforms to lure customers and retailers invest a lot to satisfy customer’s experiences. Gartner forecasts that retail sector technology spending, globally, will reach almost $203.6 billion in 2019. So who is the one leading this race, is a click store choice of consumers or a brick store?

Brick and mortar stores are not lagging behind in competition. They are equally competing to reach out to their consumers differently, and customer data collected and used conventionally helps them up to a great extent. Increasing construction of gorgeous infrastructure for shopping centers and malls, there isn’t much that physical stores are unable to offer. With changing technologies brick and mortar stores are also getting tech savvy day by day and extending their arms out to know their customer in depth. Choosing physical store has lot more to do with many other reasons rather than just “the look and feel thing”. 

Some of the reasons why brick and mortar stores are preferred more include:

• Product looks different in image and in real
• Delivery takes too long
• Shipping costs are high
• Enjoy going to shops
• I want to verify the authenticity
• Don’t trust online
• Return process is complicated

Apart from above mentioned; brick and mortar stores account for an exceptional sales graph as they are adapting latest data capturing technologies like CCTV cameras, beacons, touchscreen kiosks, Wi-Fi facility, augmented reality and biometrics for capturing eyeball attention. But still ecommerce dominating the retail market is enigmatic and needs some elaboration. 

For today’s consumer, ecommerce isn’t a big thing; shopping online is their day to day activity. Apart from increased sales, online stores also capitalize on the opportunities they get by collecting customer data with help of advanced tools and technology. It can be poles apart that consumers are ordering their merchandizes and are happy with what they receive (guess so).So does it mean that ecommerce is disrupting the physical retail stores. 

Well, no because you will see the online shopping occurs categorically only. Categorically means consumers are still reluctant in buying some type of product online and there are tactics being used to encourage consumer to leave offline and buy things online. And the main factor that’s influential is the price. Price is always a crucial factor for changing decisions. Here are few common reasons that bring consumers from door step to windows.

• Ability to shop 24*7
• Compare price
• Saves time
• Variety of product and choice
• Free shipping offers
• Convenience of getting all things at a single place
• To avoid crowds
• Avoid checkout lines
• Merchandize not available in country

Consumer data plays a vital role behind such schemes as it is a tactic to better understand consumers and their interest in purchasing. Similar is the case with physical store, the advanced technology capture data and this data help retailers to better understand their consumers. While consumers are busy shopping in their click and brick store, the data collected is becoming a helping hand to these retail and ecommerce stores.

Customer data collection is an effective way of understanding consumer needs. There are distinct sources of collecting online data through email extraction; data extraction from coupon codes etc. Scraping text from ecommerce websites for extracting prices and collecting data from social media platforms to gather product reviews are a few of the data scraping activities. Various other data collection includes:

Customer behavior data:

• Site searches
• Most recent site search
• Unmatched site searches

Cart/funnel tracking:

• Cart steps
• Most recent cart step
• Most recent order date
• Most recent products purchased
• Number of orders
• Order dates
• Products added to cart
• Products in cart
• Products purchased
• Registration/login email

Product information: 

• All category interests
• All product interests
• Categories viewed
• Most recent product viewed
• Products viewed
• Top category interest
• Top product interest

In both, brick and mortar store and ecommerce, the ultimate aim of the seller is to satisfy the consumer. And one of the major reasons why ecommerce is flourishing in comparison to brick and mortar store is because they fulfill consumers wish without even consumers demanding for it. Customer data collected by online retailers play a major role in letting them know their customer needs and fulfilling them appropriately. Consumers didn’t demand for a free delivery but over a certain amount the product delivery is free on most of the e-commerce sites. Similar attractive schemes like buy something; get something else free, the percent discounts, quantity discounts, and reward points are some of the ecommerce giveaways. Have you ever wondered the reason behind such schemes? 

There is no second thought on how this transition happened from brick store to click store but customer has witnesses this transition and believe both are successful in their own ways. With the advent of Omni-channel sales program, both traditional and online companies are putting up their finest efforts to either bring a customer to the door or the window.