Alokananda Chakraborty: Welcome to the omni-channel marketplace

Retailers need to offer a seamless experience for the modern consumer

During a meeting with Business Standard staffers recently, Amazon India's country head Amit Agarwal made an interesting point. He said the company was piloting a new model of delivery in some markets of the south - such as Bangalore - where customers shopping on Amazon.com can pick up orders shipped by the company from a friendly neighbourhood kirana store at her convenience. As a strategy, it may sound like basic common sense but, oddly, few retailers think that way. In fact, Agarwal just pointed to a very big global shift in the way marketers look at shopper marketing.

Look at it this way. In an earlier era, retailers had a single platform or channel to hawk their wares - their premises. A customer went to their premises, or the shop, when it chose to open and bought what they wanted/needed on the spot for cash. Then, they took the goods away or had their purchases home-delivered, after which the retailer ordered replacement stock. Now we have moved to a situation where we can shop with the same retailer through different channels - the physical store, online, via a mobile phone or through social media. And though the channels are different, customers expect a consistent level of service and environment through the journey.

Meet the omni-channel consumer: you. You are jumping in and out of a range of channels day and night. Now you are researching online; in no time you are at a store nearby for a look and feel or to check if it is offering a deeper discount; then, standing right there in the shop, you place an order and pay via your smartphone. In that sense, the way consumers interact with brands has become non-linear and is a culmination of many interactions across myriad touch points. It started with the spread of the internet, and has advanced dramatically over the past few years with the rapid growth of mobile and other digital technologies.

Of course, retailers know they have to offer shoppers multiple channels. So they offer a physical store, a website, a mobile app, some catalogues and a handful even go as far to squeeze themselves in your social media conversations.They have also started thinking in terms of how to get the most bang for the buck spent on each individual channel. And that's the dichotomy in marketing today: the shopper looks at the buying process as a composite whole, the retailer looks at it through silos.

Which means simply having fingers in each of these pies - or having a multi-channel approach to shopper marketing - isn't going to cut it for a retailer. He must offer an environment that allows customers to use the channel of their choice. And he has to make these complex "hand-offs" between the different channels as seamless for the customer as possible. In that sense, omni-channel is about viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, planning and executing the customer experience across all channels, so that it is integrated and consistent.

Why is it important? A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report, "Beyond the Checkout Cart", says the omni-channel consumer is shaping the future of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores alike. According to MIT's report, 80 per cent of store shoppers check prices online, with a third accessing the information on their mobile device while inside the actual store.

Marketers across the globe have started reacting to this trend systematically. US retailer Macy's now describes itself as an "omni-channel retail organisation operating stores and websites". Another report highlights that the heritage brand no longer breaks down its sales by channel. Doffing its hat to the trend, Best Buy, another American multinational dealing with consumer electronics, says its omni-channel strategy hinges on strengthening its brick-and-mortar stores that were threatened by e-commerce competitors at one point. For instance, it added a store pick-up for its online buyers some years back and it became a huge hit.

For the buyer, the advantages are obvious. You don't typically save money, but there is a guarantee that when you get to the store, the product you bought will be waiting for you, and not be sold out. That means you don't have to go looking for it at the store down its people-infested aisles or stand in the long checkout line since you've paid for it already. At least in theory.

If omni-channel marketing is the way to go, retailers need to align their support technology and processes to offer an integrated experience. Imagine this: you place an order through a retailer's website, opt to pick it up from a kirana store and then find that: (a) the products haven't arrived; or (b) nobody at the store knows where to find them; or (c) both. The whole purpose of setting up the different channels - bringing the predictability of online shopping into the otherwise chaotic world of in-store purchasing - is defeated.

My personal experience tells me there's a huge amount of white space here - nobody is doing a particularly good job at this point. And that means opportunity, right?