As the second- fastest digitising nation in the world . India is on the path to becoming a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025.
Maximizing both online and offline to fuel each other has become one of the top priorities of retailers today. A recent Harvard Business Review article noted that “while e-commerce will continue to be an essential element of retail strategy, the future success of retailers will ultimately depend on creating a cohesive customer experience, both online and in stores.” While ecommerce sales will continue to grow, Google’s research “shows the pandemic has made people more flexible about online retailer businesses. How can retailers be prepared for this new “phygital” world that we are all living in today?
Every retailer, from grocery to luxury fashion, needs to fully understand that their customers’ shopping habits have permanently changed. The wide adoption of ecommerce means that the consumer’s expectations across service, convenience, and ease of navigation will need to be translated into the physical retail experience in order to entice people to shop in-store. Investing in the tools that will allow retailers to manage or even exceed their customers’ expectations will be the key to a successful merging of the physical and digital environments.
Indian retail market is world's third largest consumer market, where 65% of discovery happens online, 97% of shopping takes place offline. The winner will be one who can offer an affordable, high-quality experience both online and offline to a billion people. A recent article stated that there are 70 million online shoppers in India, of whom only 10 million can be classified as 'digital natives'. These numbers mean that today in a country of 1.3 billion people, less than 1 percent would be considered to be digital natives.
The significant investments and businesses that have been seen in unorganised retail over the last few years suggest that investors and entrepreneurs realise that Indian unorganised retail presents a massive opportunity. The solution for growth and opportunity is the use of technology ,to make unorganised retail more efficient.
Area Online is the concept of phygital of the current era which envisage a hyper-local distribution as said by Mr Yatin Shah , Founder Area Online . Area Online generates value for both the stores and the consumers. To understand this better, let us look at what the unorganised retail sector lacks and the solution lies in phygital concept of Area online
Real-time data of retailer/shopkeeper and their product and service
Web page of each customer making it local to global
Enriching the each local shopping area with area 0nline.
A supply chain that is modernised to deal with a demanding consumer.
Technology that links the consumer to the factory/shops/households/retailers
The ability to generate demand
Acquire consumers over and above the usual walk-ins
Further Mr Shah says “Phygital commerce has the ability to use the unorganised retail assets to integrate all the way from the consumer to the factory, create massive scale to serve a billion people is where the real value creation and opportunity lie.”
The future belongs to those who can build models that can organise millions of unorganised retailers to expand and create new online markets. The last unconquered consumer market of the world, India, will see $100 billion internet businesses emerge when a billion Indians access the digital experience.
Area Online offers you your own online store in less than 60 Seconds where you can display all your products and services online .
End to end soluton.
No commission.
Shops/retailer can sell their products/services directly to customers without aggregators.
