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Omnichannel: The Path to becoming Omnipotent
by Nisha Panjabi
May 01 2024 | 04 min read
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Board the Omnichannel train now, or lose the game!
Here’s what a typical day in a retail business boardroom looks like:
“How can we ensure a ubiquitous shopping experience for our customers?
Are we ensuring our brand placement at all touchpoints possible?
Are we providing end-to-end seamless shopping experiences?”
It is wild how all these questions align with one retailing concept. All the marketing geeks and strategists want to join the holy crusade and create an omnichannel or seamless presence for their retail brands.
What exactly is the omnichannel presence, and why is it the talk of the town? (read world)
Cohesive, connected and unified efforts of selling, marketing and serving the needs of the customers by contending with them in every possible path is what omni-channel presence is all about. According to the global omnichannel leadership report, around 36% of GenZ consumers and a quarter of global customers prefer an omnichannel retail experience.
Amna, a fitness influencer and enthusiast, browses through a brand that offers healthy snacking options and her regular nutrition bars online, adding several to her shopping cart. Later, she visited a nearby retail store where she discovered the products of the same brand. Due to the presence of cart history and brand recall through her online interaction with the brand, she bought her nutritional supplies for the month through that offline store. This is an example of a transition from online brand interaction resulting in a purchase from a physical store.
This example is the reality that most brands want to create for themselves. In their quest to blur the distinction between online & offline, businesses are taking the giant leap and integrating their channels to reduce friction and make the customer stay on a single platform for a more extended period.
Omnichannel shakes hands with retail 4.0
What will happen when omnichannel retail shakes hands with Retail 4.0?
It will be indeed #CoupleGoals for a Retail Business. Retail 4.0 is the newest version in the valley and is building upon artificial intelligence and machine learning competencies to dive deep into customer preferences, buying patterns, and preferences. This data is further analysed to go that extra mile in the customer experience.
In the new era of retail, technology is changing the game. With virtual and augmented reality, shopping has become an immersive experience for the consumers, thus bridging the gap between digital and physical and turning into a genuinely phygital experience. An IBM report published in 2022 also mentions that while 75% of consumers rely on shopping in-store, they increasingly seek digital immersion to enhance their shopping experiences. Retail 4.0 is fueling the fire to the modern composable commerce approach, which is all about ‘composing’ the customer experience with the best-in-class components. The enormous flexibility offered by this approach can orchestrate systemised integration of Inventory visibility systems, live chats and AI immersion into the checkout processes.
Oh, by the way, everything mentioned is not a bullet in the air. Here’s the snippet from a McKinsey report that hits just the spot.
This omnichannel advantage becomes evident in the above given exhibit comparing the organic customer attraction capabilities of brick-and-mortar retailers and pure-online retailers. Brick-and-mortar retailers generally secure nearly twice the share of organic traffic compared to pure-online players across most categories. Consequently, brick-and-mortar retailers can achieve the same consumer reach while spending considerably less on marketing.
Future of Omnichannel & Retail 4.0
Omnichannel, teamed with Retail 4.0, is not about revamping the overall business presence to multiple channels; it’s always about creating a circular experience for the user with the swift amalgamation of physical stores to an online presence without any breaks in between.
The global omnichannel retail report 2024 talks about a research conducted on 700 plus brands where the findings turned out to be amusing. 60% of the brands under the survey offered services like BORIS & BOPIS and for the retailers located in Australia alone it turned out to be 95%. These findings can be the building blocks for forthcoming retail brands as they define their Go-To-Market strategy and customer touchpoints.
The consumer preferences dynamics are changing faster than ever, especially in the post-pandemic era, and brands need to be on their toes, understand these needs, and offer hyper-personalized services and offerings to achieve instant customer satisfaction. The future of omnichannel retailing is blazing. It will open the door for various new forms of marketing.
Viral memes and music may stay around for a month, but omnichannel retailing, coupled with the charisma of retail 4.0, is a frenzy which is here to stay and thrive.
Retail brands are thus left to choose to join the bandwagon or perish.
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